Proceedings at the 2016 Ake Arts and Book Festival have been dominated by interactive discussions with authors and experts from various fields. The quality of the sessions and interactions with audiences offers a sound rebuttal to any belief that art festivals are incapable of contributing solutions to societal problems.

This year’s Festival addresses pertinent issues but extends its focus to matters that are usually overlooked or denied. The discussions have spanned mental health, terrorism, sensuality, ageism and notions of identity.

In a panel moderated by Cassava Republic’s Emma Shercliff, writers Sarah Ladipo Manyika, (Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun) and Yewande Omotoso, (The Woman Next Door), explain why they have chosen to tell their stories through sassy female oldsters. With race relations featuring heavily in both works, the authors offer a new perspective about old age, one that resists its limitations and instead focuses on its opportunities.

Terrorism was spotlighted when journalist Kadaria Ahmed engaged photographer Fati Abubakar; journalist and author Andrew Walker, and activist and writer Chitra Nagarajan in a debate on “women in post-Boko Haram reality”. The three panelists who have worked closely with victims of the insurgency spoke extensively about their personal experiences as well as those of their subjects.

In another session anchored by Ms Ahmed, Teju Cole (Known and Strange Things) and Helon Habila (The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria), while discussing their books, explored a wide range of topics which included religion, terrorism and politics. Both writers not only read excerpts from their new novels but gave eloquent defences of their styles of writing and how their works discuss relevant issues.

Despite the dominance of book chats and panel discussions, the short film sessions also directed attention to issues that have at one time or the other dominated public discourse. On the film programme was Sade Adeniran’s A Mother’s Journey, a harrowing tale of postnatal depression and abandonment, and Umar Turaki’s Salt, which focused on the allegedly-curative salt bath touted as a cure for the Ebola virus. Also on the bill was Udoka Oyeka’s No Good Turn, whose narrative draws from the Boko Haram crisis.

The 2016 Ake Arts and Book Festival has served as a gathering of art and culture enthusiasts and through its theme, “Beneath This Skin”, focuses on starting conversations about the African perspective of identity. It is currently holding at the Arts and Cultural Centre, Kuto in Abeokuta and ends on Sunday, November 20.

On the longlist for the 2016 prize are: Mr and Mrs Doctor by Julie Tromuany;
The Yearning by MohaleMashigo; Piggy Boy’s Blues by NakhaneToure; The Peculiars by Jen Thorpe; Born On Tuesday by Elnathan John; And After Many Days by Jowhor Ile; Dub Steps by Andrew Miller; The Seed Thief by Jacqui L’ange; and Nwelezelanga The Star Child by Unathi Magubeni.

The Etisalat prize “celebrates debut African writers of published fiction”.

The winner of the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Literature will be awarded a cash prize of £15,000 and will be mentored by Professor Giles Foden, award-winning author of The Last King of England at the University of East Anglia.

The 2016 edition of the Ake Arts and Book Festival kicked off Thursday with an opening ceremony in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Hosted by media personality, Wana Udobang, the event began with the arrival of the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo and renditions of the national and Ogun State anthems by Falana and Adunni and Nefertiti.

This was followed by a welcome address from the festival’s director, Ms Lola Shoneyin who highlighted the opportunities for collaboration, networking and relationship-building created since the festival began in 2013.

She said this year’s festival promises a memorable exploration of African identity through a series of panels, performances and book chats.

The organisers have also ensured that the festival reaches a wide audience by creating a mobile application; a designated blog, and by live streaming events on the festival’s YouTube channel.

Her speech was followed by Oba Gbadebo’s goodwill message, which featured a brief touch of history and a promise that Abeokuta would always host the festival.

He also praised the hard work and creativity of the organisers which he said was evident from previous editions and the quality of events lined up for this year.

The Alake’s speech was followed by a series of messages from representatives of the festival’s sponsors and supporters who emphasised the festival’s importance in drawing attention to the arts; its potential for tourism and changing negative stereotypes held towards Nigeria and its citizens.

The event also featured the announcement of the long list for the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Literature.

This was done by award-winning author and poet, Helon Habila and Elvis Ogiemwanye, Etisalat Nigeria’s Director, Brand and Experience.

The Etisalat long list was not the only thing to be unveiled. Representatives of the African Speculative Fiction Society, led by Chinelo Onwualu, also presented the Nommo Awards for African Speculative Fiction by Africans, which has been awarded four years’ worth of prize money by the founder of the African Science Academy and the most influential black person in the UK, Tom Ilube.

The opening was not all about speeches though, as it featured performances from poet and co-convener of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, Titilope Sonuga and celebrated female singing group Adunni and Nefertiti.

This year’s festival was declared open by Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, who was represented by the state Commissioner for Culture and Tourism, Hon. Muyiwa Ladipo.

The Ake Arts and Book Festival is currently holding at the Arts and Cultural Centre, Kuto in Abeokuta, and ends on Sunday, November 19.

The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has announced the cancellation of the interview test for National Common Entrance Examination (NCCE) into Federal Government colleges.

A statement issued by the Federal Ministry of Education on Monday in Abuja said that the cancellation of the test for NCCE would take effect from the 2017/2018 academic year.

The statement signed by Mr Bem Goong, the Deputy Director, Press, said that the minister could not establish the rationale for second test for NCCE organised by the National Examination Council (NECO).

“The second test is an unnecessary additional financial burden on parents/guardians.

“The era of multiple examinations attracting prohibitive fees cannot be accommodated by the Buhari administration, especially against the backdrop of government’s determination to increase access to education as a platform for breaking the cycle of poverty,’’ the statement quoted Adamu as saying.

The statement said that Adamu had directed NECO to strengthen its examination processes with a view to achieving quality and credible examination for admission into unity schools at the first test.

It said that the minister argued that multiple examinations did not necessarily translate to the admission of quality pupils in secondary schools.

The statement said that Adamu maintained that 2016/2017 academic year remained the effective date for the ban on Post-UTME, advising vice-chancellors to adhere strictly to the policy in the overriding public interest.

]]>Aluu community mourns Elechi Amadihttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2016/06/30/aluu-community-mourns-elechi-amadi/
Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:03:51 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=291908Aluu Community in Ikwerre Local Government of Rivers has been thrown into mourning mood following the passing on of Chief Elechi Amadi, an educationist and author.

Amadi, 82, a retired army officer and former commissioner for education in Rivers, died on Wednesday in Port Harcourt.

A correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), who visited the community on Thursday reports that many residents received the news of Amadi’s death with shock.

Some of the residents said they would miss him, especially his fatherly role and philanthropist disposition.

Chief Adi Wali, a cousin to Amadi, said that his death was a big shock to the community.

“We have lost a father, brother and an icon. It is a big shock to this community. It is an end of a generation that can never be brought back,” he said.

Wali said that the late author was the light of the community, adding that they were yet to come to terms with his death.

“We lost an educationist, a pathfinder and a colossus. I do not know when we can get somebody like him again,” he said.

He said that as Permanent Secretary in the state ministry of education, Amadi played a prominent role in the locating a campus of the University of Port Harcourt at Aluu.

Mr. Uzor Nwamara, the Chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Rivers chapter, said some executive members of the group were with Amadi in the hospital an hour before he died.

“It was indeed very painful to hear that he passed on an hour after leaving him in the hospital.

“Its beyond a shock. Amadi was a father, philanthropist and was a founding member of the ANA in the country,’’ he said.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Benson Idonije, who is arguably Nigeria’s most informed analyst of jazz music and an enthusiastic promoter of popular culture and music has released for public review and consideration an absolutely well-informed biography of Fela, the Afro-beat music maestro. The book is a useful contribution in my opinion. But the first thing I noticed- signposted by the copy sent to me, is how indeed, this particular publication appears to be a victim of the emergent crises of publishing in Africa in dispossessed economies. The copy sent to me is copyrighted 2014; on the cover it is described as a preview edition, scheduled for “official release: first quarter 2015”, the review copy doesn’t even have an ISBN number, there is no index and the bibliography is wrongly presented.

After more than 29 years of assessing manuscripts and editing/reviewing books, I assume that I can conveniently imagine what the author, printers and local publishers of this book must have gone through, the same challenges other book writers publishing in sub-Saharan Africa face at the moment: looking for money, getting good editors, looking for publishers, and hoping that there will be readers. But we must be glad, and Benson Idonije deserves to be congratulated, on his tenacity, in bringing out against all possible odds, a memoir as he correctly describes it, on Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, legend, maestro, counterculture hero, mystic, musician, philosopher, iconoclast, rebel, patriot and one of Africa’s most significant contributions to the world of art and music in the 20th century.

It is 2016, 19 years after Fela’s death, and here is a tribute of legends to the legend, a brilliant memoir, from a man who served as Fela’s first manager, beginning with the Jazz Quintet/Koola Lobitos in 1963/4, and who served him dutifully as a friend, colleague, fan and brother, and who has remained faithful to the legend(s) told and untold. With this book, Idonije fills many gaps, as participant-observer, as a ringside viewer and as a witness to the history of the making of a genius.

Many books have already been written about Fela from many perspectives. But the beauty of true genius is that it remains unfathomable, like an endless vortex, and in terms of identity, stands on its own terms. With his art, music, persona and impact, Fela has ascended to the level of such eponymous geniuses, recognized only on a first name basis: Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, etc: global treasures who do not need a second affirmation of identity. So, it is with such figures, that every other contribution extends the narrative of excellence, impactful tradition, and historicity.

Benson Idonije

And so it is with Benson Idonije’s memoir on Fela. There have been similar books of close encounters and relationships with Fela in his lifetime, by John Collins, Uwa Erhabor, Michael Veal, Carlos Moore, and Majemite Jaboro, and other publications, which through the authors’ encounter with Fela’s music and persona provide rigorous scholastic analysis. Idonije provides an informed analysis of Fela’s music in the context of the traditions of jazz, funk, soul music, highlife, rock, indigenous African music, blues, but the strongest parts of his memoir deal not with pretensions at intellectual deconstruction of form, melody, and rhythm, or lyrics, but with a ringside report of Fela as a total musician, and artiste.

This is where the strength and the originality of this book lies. Benson Idonije is a music critic, but he is probably incapable of deploying the jargons and the distracting terms of academic inquiry, and he does not struggle too hard in that direction. But he tells a story that humanizes Fela, focusing on his birth, his roots as a musician, including family influences, his formation, evolution, maturation and the transcendentalism of his genius. He does this as a man who was there. He does this as a brother, friend, critic, sounding board, and partner. He tells the story the way nobody else can, he has the helicopter view, the ringside view and the bedroom view: the book tells stories for example of how Idonije’s one room habitat served as Fela’s “slaughter slab” for besotted female fans, and his witness to Fela’s emergence as a sex and marijuana symbol, made possible by the notorious women who came into his life, who also helped to grow his art.

Fela’s genius borders on illuminant insanity. Idonije reveals, much better than any previous biographer, the making of Fela, and the near-magical progression of this genius: his DNA as ineluctable determinism, his beginnings as pianist and rebel in his secondary school days, his objection to convention, command and control even as a staff of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, his growth and odyssey, the influence of his mother and brothers and the rest of the family, real and acquired, his borderless nationalism and his politics of protest which resulted in many runs-in with the establishment, 199 arrests by the police, incarceration, humiliation, harassment of his Kalakuta shrine and Republic, and his life of sex and marijuana, then his death and impact after death. Some of these themes from his birth in 1938 till his death in August 1997, have been dealt with at great length in other accounts. Idonije takes the narrative further, revealing and extending the narrative about a man who became a legend before his very eyes, and with whom he shared secrets and private experiences, made possible only by trust and mutual respect, an island of friendship and intimacy unknown to outsiders. This then, is not a book of research; it is an original testimony, presented in absolute good faith.

Some of those other things Idonije brings afresh to the table are refreshing insider details about Fela’s essence, his relationship with music producers, his band, recording companies, the very nature of his life as a committed artist and professional, his rigorous originality, self-assuredness, assertiveness, pride, courage and perpetual preparedness to raise art above commerce. He tells the story of Fela’s musically odyssey, and the story is not just about Fela, but the evolution of the band, from Koola Lobitos to Egypt ‘80, and after, and how ideology, exposure and influences created the enigma, the genius and the music that became Fela. Idonije deconstructs the genius, not as a mystically delivered entity, but as an essence that grew through training, hardwork, perspiration, originality, influences, musical, ideological and political, and whose being-ness and truthfulness provided a template for the lifetime and post-humous evolution of a style, example and tradition. He proves in the end how the originality of genius survives all sorts of threats: physical, socio-political and contrived.

In painting this picture, Idonije delicately manages sentimental assessment and although he is a sympathetic biographer, he shuns hagiography. It is obvious that he is not impressed by Fela’s latter-day embrace of marijuana, which he avoided in his earlier years, or the mysticism and love of spirits that drove him into illusions and paranoia, but on this subject, Idonije treads very carefully, refusing to pass judgments that could damage the legend. He is after all, a protective biographer, so protective he also treats Fela’s misogyny lightly even if he ends up reinforcing the received belief that for Fela, a woman is at best a sex object, and sex a source of spiritual reinforcement. He further says a lot about other members of the band, the gifted members of the ensemble and the non-musician members of YAP, MOP, area boys support groups, media executives and lawyers whose contributions and individual talents made Fela possible. Fela thus, emerging not as an individual artist stricto senso, but as a movement, as philosophy, as an idea, as institution, as the sum of total artistry, as leader of an orchestra, indeed as phenomenon.

Idonije’s participant-observer and first-hand analyst status also provides him the opportunity to write a story that goes beyond Fela to cover the highlife scenes of Nigeria and Ghana in the 60s and 70s, and the collaboration and rivalry among the various emerging stars, their influences and styles and the character of the musical audiences and trends in Ghana and Nigeria which had corresponding impact on the taste and tone of the social and cultural landscape. From Fela to the present, there has been so much that has changed in that landscape, many of the commercially successful artistes of the time have vanished into oblivion and irrelevance, but Fela lives because of the originality of his art and musicianship. Miles Davis, one of the many influences on Fela has been reported as saying “Fela is the future of music”.

Idonije’s account establishes just exactly how true this is: his continuing impact and the endlessness of his relevance. But as the book shows, there can only be one Fela: an artist with conscience, who was an objective product of his encounters and experiences, a true professional who found his own voice and mission, an avatar whose talent became a political and social weapon for protecting, defending and leading the poor and the disadvantaged against the evils of corruption and irresponsible leadership.

Idonije despite the humility he declares in his preface aspires, quite obviously, to produce a definitive, comprehensive book as he struggles to cover all the grounds, but he is smart enough to acknowledge that his account certainly cannot be the “last word”. He observes poignantly that whereas the international community has always admired and honoured Fela, the attitude to his art by the central Nigerian government, from the military to the civilian administrations, has been one of disregard, with perhaps the exception of the Lagos state government, which sponsored the creation of a Fela museum. Fela’s post-humous presence on Broadway and the growth of Felaism as creed and tradition is a victorious talk-back, an act of defiance, from the grave by a true artist whose example defined the true nature of the art of commitment, contextually and sub-textually.

Idonije and Fela referred to each other as “Oyejo”: a bastardization of the Yoruba phrase “Oya e joo” inevitably mangled, during a performance visit to Nigeria by Dizzy Gillespie, trying to connect with his back up team of illiterate Yoruba drummers. Fela was not an original fan of Gillespie, due to his aversion to the mixing of jazz with showmanship, but intellectual interaction with Idonije encouraged Fela to appreciate Gillespie’s original skills, and the product was an eventual number titled “Oyejo”, a part-tribute as it were. The picture Idonije paints through narratives such as this, is that of Fela as an open-minded, broadminded artiste who drew influences and inspiration from just about any possible source: duty boys, managers, producers, bedroom partners and so on but who at all times knew what he wanted, and called his own shots. Benson Idonije writes a part of his own biography in telling his friend’s story but unlike some other biographers before him, he does not over-project himself and he does not upstage the legend.

This is a book that should benefit from further projection and the attention of the reading public. Unlike Gillespie in that particular linguistically challenged account, Fela, alive and in death, needs not say “Oya e joo.” His art has located him concretely in the mainstream along with the giants including Dizzy Gillespie himself and others. This book, indeed, is a truly worthy contribution: In Fela’s voice, “everybody say yeah, yeah.”

]]>http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2016/06/17/dis-fela-sef-he-lives/feed/1Why we are all Biafranshttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2016/05/11/why-we-are-all-biafrans/
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2016/05/11/why-we-are-all-biafrans/#commentsWed, 11 May 2016 08:59:05 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=285900

Chidi will present his third book, ‘We Are All Biafrans’ in Abuja on 31 May.

In this interview with AYORINDE OLUOKUN, Onumah gives an insight into the book which he said focuses on the crises of nationhood in Nigeria and the need to urgently restructure the country in line with true practice of federalism to avoid a looming catastrophe.

We Are All Biafrans is your third book, what is the motivation for it and how is it different from the two you have written earlier?

The reason is the same, but a little bit more. I have always focused on the structure of Nigeria, our federalism- my argument for many years have been that Nigeria is a very flawed national, structurally. And that many, if not all of the problems that confront us emanate from the flawed nature of our federalism. So, this is just one more intervention in that line of argument. I think it is coming out at appropriate time considering the many crises confronting us today as a nation. My argument basically is that we need to, as Chinua Achebe would say; go back to the place where the rain started beating us. The structure of Nigeria we had at independence was different from what we had today. We had to go back to the structure of Nigeria we had before the creation of the 12 States in 1967. I am not in any way arguing for a regional government. My argument is that we need to redefine what federalism means for us. The way we practice federalism is not my understanding of that term and it is not the way it is practiced in countries around the world that practiced federalism. I think the bad nature of federalism we practiced here made the states that are ought to be component part of Nigeria irresponsible. We need to go back to the system of federalism in the proper sense- that comes with responsibility, so states can be talking about how to generate rather than how to share resources. So, that is basically my argument. And to use the term specifically, “We Are All Biafrans,” the agitations for Biafra have been going on for a while now and I look at Nigeria generally and I saw that in every part of the country, there is one form of agitation or the other. So, for me, the “Biafra” in this book could be replaced by agitations or protests, like: We Are All Protesters. We are all being messed up by the Nigerian State in one way or the other and therefore, we need to collectively try to do something about it. That’s basically the idea behind the choice of the title. It has nothing to do with the Biafra agitation itself. For me, it was a metaphor for the many problems confronting us as a people.

So, how did you address these national problems in the book?

The book is a collection of essays and I try to divide it into five chapters, looking at the various themes around the issues covered. Chapter one for instance deals with the politics of 2015, chapter two deals with the issue of the national conference and what I would like to refer to as Nigeria as a country appears to be dancing on the brink. Chapter three is titled, Unmaking Nigeria. The argument here is that many of the decisions we take as a people, particularly at the governmental level does not serve the purpose of unifying Nigeria, but it serves the purpose of destroying unmaking Nigeria, of destroying Nigeria. It is one thing to say the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable, it is another thing for the government to make efforts to unify Nigerians knowing that this is a country torn apart by so many different forces. I think there is something peculiar about Nigeria which many Nigerians don’t seem to know, I mean Nigeria is a country like no other. It is a wonderful place, with a lot of wonderful people, great human resources. But we need to get together first for all of these to come together. When you look at Nigeria as a country, you will find out that Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world where you have the two major religions in equal strength in terms of number of adherents. And at the same time, you have three major ethnic groups. India at independence in 1947, you had Pakistan, which was the Muslim part going its separate way. So, basically, another country came out of India. But if that had not happened, you would have had an India where there is a huge Muslim population alongside a huge Hindu population.

But in the case of Nigeria, Muslims and Christians, depending on who you ask, but relatively, we are at equal strength, then you now have three major ethnic groups. So, it is always like is a war situation. There is a balance of forces, nothing can give, because if you have a country where one group is dominant, more often than not, that group would stamp its authority, its way of life, its religion on the rest of the country as you have in different parts of the world- Europe, Asia, America and so on. That’s for religion. If you also have a situation where you have one or even two dominant groups, those two groups- if they are not fighting- they can come together and impose their culture or system on the rest of the country. So, we have to really sit down to see how we can manage this peculiarity which we haven’t done as a people.

At Independence, Nigeria seems to be working. So, what went wrong?

So many things went wrong with the military intervention in Nigeria. The military virtually destroyed this country and it ought not to have been so. It should have been possible, considering these peculiarities that I mentioned to have a military government that is nationalistic, patriotic. You saw what happened in the case of Turkey for example. There were situations around the world where you have patriotic and nationalistic soldiers who would come and say, look, this country has this peculiarity, how do we deal with them? How do we build structures that would ensure that in 10, 20 years time, people would be united, people won’t bother where they come from, people won’t bother about what religion they profess. Their interest would be in the national interest. But in the case of Nigeria, the military created more confusion, created more division and with their command and control structure, institutionalized those errant behaviours that they impose on Nigerians. And that’s what we are living with today.

The third chapter of the book treats the issue that all the things we are going through today emanated from the structure of the country which the military handed over to us. The fourth chapter, Of Scoundrels and Statesmen was just trying to highlight some of the silly things that our politicians either say or do, all in the name of being in the position of authority. For example, I look at (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo’s satanic letters. Here is Obasanjo who was in power for eight years as civilian president after serving three years- from 1976 to 1979 as the military Head of State. He had so much goodwill to turn the country around, but he messed it up big time. A few years later, he comes around; he is writing letters as if it is letters that will solve the problems of Nigeria. I take on people like Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan who literarily ran amok as the First Lady of Nigeria, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tambuwal, the issue of Kudirat Abiola and the judgment of Major Hamza Mustapha which I thought was a travesty of justice. The issue of corruption also is discussed in the book. I took on the case of former Akwa Ibom State Governor. I just use his case as an example-when he left office, he gave himself fantastic benefits, salaries and so on. And that’s part of the challenges I keep talking about- if states are responsible for generating the money they spend, I don’t think they would be so irresponsible in spending it. And if they do and the state assemblies can’t hold them responsible, that’s their problem. I hear from my state even that the House of Assembly has been hijacked by the Governor, that nobody questions what is happening in the State. Somebody said the Mace- I don’t know if he is joking or serious- said it is at the Government House, that the Governor has impeached the State. That’s part of the crises of Nigeria. Everybody focuses on the Federal Government. Nobody takes into account what the Governors, the local governments are doing; it is important that we focus on that. Let’s restructure Nigeria and have states being responsible. We need to go back to a system where there will be proper debates, proper arguments in our State Assemblies.

Then chapter five talks about the Last Missionary Journey. The focus really is looking ahead. The argument, as I mentioned earlier is that many, if not all the problems that confront us as a people is rooted in the structure, the Constitution of Nigeria. So, what do we do then? We have to restructure the country. As far as what passes as the 1999 Constitution today is nothing more than a military decree. The government’s idea of constitution making is to decree certain things- you want to decree national unity like you want to decree a marriage. It doesn’t work like that. Nigeria is not a huge military barrack. Nigeria is a multi ethnic, multi cultural, multi religious nation of about 200 million people. So, you can’t decree these things. How do you decree local governments from the constitution? It means for you to add a local government, you have to literarily change the constitution. How can that makes for progress? It is the central government and states that makes up the federation. The military created these local governments and shared it, in some cases to gratify their wives, girlfriends, in laws and those around them. Now, these local governments have become a burden. A few months ago, the Governor of Nasarawa State said he was dissolving a local government because the local government made N30, 000 as internally generated revenue in a month. And I was asking myself, ‘how possible is that?’ A young man or woman selling oranges on the streets can make N30,000 in a month, not to talk of a local government, a constituted authority that can impose charges on a lot of things- tolls, markets and so on. The N30, 000, is it to buy the papers to run the office or what? So, it comes back to the issue of power without responsibility. Let every state create local governments they are able to manage. If Nasarawa State, because of its size and population can manage two, three local governments, let them create the local governments. So, if any money is coming from the federal level, it should go to the states. Of course, the states would need to have their own security apparatus, have their own police. In a world where universities have their own police, there is no reason why states in Nigeria can’t have their own police. You go to different places all over the world, especially where federalism is practised, local governments have their police; universities have their police, big institutions have their police. At the end of the day, they all have to defer to the federal police, if a crime crosses from one state to the other, the federal police will come. If you look at the issue of the Fulani herdsmen, I don’t even want to use the term “Fulani,” for me, a crime has been committed, if it is by Okada riders, Herdsmen and so on, we don’t need to tag it with their religion or where they come from, they are Nigerians. So, if a crime has been committed, let the state, the local government deal with that crime. If for any reason, they are unable to do that and they need the help of federal government, they can call for it and if the crime crosses the boundary, it becomes a federal crime. So, these are the arguments that I am pushing. And I think we should not be afraid to have this debate which very few people seem interested in. We just want to be managing this country. We wake up every day, we hear about this crisis, we try to proffer solutions, we moved on to the next crisis- whether it is militancy, whether it is those agitating for Biafra , whether it’s land issue. There was a time in this country when communal fight over land was a big issue.You devoted a chapter to 2015 general election in the book. What would you say is the significance of that election to us as a nation?

Of course, we all know what the issues were in 2015; religion, ethnicity was very paramount which is typical of politics in Nigeria, then, the argument about Nigeria disintegration, the so called prediction by the United States and so on. So to a great extent, we are happy to have dodged the bullet. And also, we managed to do something that the country hasn’t experienced before which is to change government from one political party to the other. So, to that extent, 2015 overall could said to be positive. And I also think that overall, in broader terms, what I argued in my book is that we have managed to do it, let’s hope we will able to repeat the feat. If we are able to repeat it, that means our democracy is sustainable, we would probably not have any military incursion again; people can be voted into power or out of power. And that comes with a level of responsibility- people know that at the end of the election, certain things can happen. Now, we have a new government in place. People voted for the government based on certain promises and I am happy the way Nigerians are carrying on that even in the midst of all the crises, economic meltdown, people are still endeavouring each day to hold the government to account-whether it is Occupy National Assembly, the campaign on the social media, the Buhari meter that different organizations are involved in, just to keep the government on its toes.

But having said that, I think there are big issues about Nigerian politics which is also rooted in the nature of our federalism and it is something that when we started talking about we may not be able to finish. We need to seriously reform our election process. Even though the 2015 election had more or less become history, you could see that apart from the partisans, not many people enthusiastically took part. It is important to have a system that takes everybody along- whether you believe in a political party or not. It is also important to have a situation in which people are not coerced to come and vote, our election is not militarised. But the major argument is about how we elect our leaders. We still have the godfathers and at the end of the day, we just elect charlatans and all kinds of dubious characters who are not interested in the welfare of the people. I think we missed it many years ago when IBB tried to streamline two political parties without founders and in which everybody is a equal joiner. If we had sustained that culture, by now the political parties would have been owned by the people. Of course, influential people in political parties will always wield influence, but not the kind of thing in which some chiefs or elders of the party will sit down somewhere and appoint the party candidates and the party primaries are just formalities. We need to have a system, in which the process which our leaders emerge is democratic with a measure of integrity. Until we are able to get to that- I don’t know how long it will take us – maybe another 10, 15, 20 years of sustained democracy. I don’t know where we will go from here; it is quite a challenging time for Nigeria. But at least, we have a President that even with all the criticisms of the fight against corruption, who I personally do not see as any of the other Presidents before him; we have a President who is not engaged in primitive accumulation, who is not fighting with his boys for contracts and so on. That is the positive. How we can build on that is another thing. It also important therefore that that President has the capacity to also deal with those around him, it is not a one man fight. We need to institutionalise the anti corruption. And I don’t know how far the government can go on that because the issue of corruption is about systems.

I have been part of a project that does some research on corruption and I keep asking myself, “What kind of system makes it possible?” The IG stole N50 billion, that is it the accountant or the cashier that gave him the money? The governors, the senators stole so much, what kind of systems makes it possible? So, we are back to the issue of the system, the structures- because there is so much free money flying around the country, people are stealing. If people work for their money, if they generate the money they spend, they won’t be stealing it the way they are stealing it. So, I don’t know how the Buhari administration will do it, but they need to tackle corruption institutionally and structurally. Look at what the government has done with Treasury Single Account, we need to go beyond such issues and talk about so many things about why there is so much free money floating around. It is also about the issue of nationalism I talked about. People do not believe in this country. So, they can steal. I was speaking to one lecturer who said her daughter went to a local government in a part of this country to give birth and they have to bring lantern to take the delivery because even when they have a generator, they don’t have a battery to power the generator. You can imagine that level of irresponsibility, putting human lives at stake because of lack of batteries. It is important that we emphasise the point that if people know that if they steal from this country, the future of their children and grandchildren will be in jeopardy, then they would have to think twice about it.

You said the book is a participant observation of a country walking to disaster. Is our situation that bad?

It’s the sub-topic, a participant observer- I am a Nigerian, I just turned 50 few days ago and from my teenage years, I have been interested in this country because I sincerely believe that we have no other country than this one. I don’t know for other people, but for me, this is the only country I feel comfortable in. Comfortable not in terms of material things, but in the sense that when you have ownership of something, nobody can mess you up- this is my own, this is my country. No matter what you achieve, whether you are professor or whatever, you still look at yourself if you look outside that this thing doesn’t belong to me. So, I have always been interested in the Nigerian situation- how we can build a peaceful, prosperous, egalitarian modern society. But we can’t do that until we address the fundamentals. For example, I read a few days ago about the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources talking about government’s commitment to the prospect for oil in the Chad Basin. And I said this thing has been going for as long as I can remember.

Saudi Arabia just made a commitment few weeks ago that in the next four, five years, oil will be a marginal part of their GDP and foreign reserves. This is Saudi Arabia, a country swimming in oil, trying to wean itself from oil. Oil is about $30 per barrel and we are spending money prospecting for oil. So, why don’t we spend that money to prospect for some other alternative means of energy- ethanol or some other kind of energy? Is it the geopolitics of it, to satisfy certain interests? These are the kinds of petty challenges that we need to confront as a people. And I think it is because we have not come to an agreement of what Nigeria means to us as Nigerians. And I raised this issue in the book, what is Nigeria? Who is a Nigerian? What does being a Nigerian mean? I raised arguments there that it is for this same reason that people steal money and go and buy pent houses in Panama, hide their money in Dubai, buy houses or hotels that they would never, ever be able to stay in. if people spent one quarter of the money stolen in this country at home, Nigeria would not be like we have it now. But it’s like we have come to an agreement that there is really no country.

How is that…
Because look at it, only a mad person will steal from himself, if you believe that this thing is yours, you and your family, you have a stake in this country, you children, grandchildren have a stake in this country, you won’t steal money to impair the future of that country. But because it is convenient for us- we steal the money, we go and buy houses, we go to foreign hospitals, and we are not ashamed of it. We send our children to schools abroad- the governors, the ministers are all involved. And now, Nigeria is heading into crises and people are not even worried about it. I tell myself that nothing screams “I don’t believe in this country” more than the issue of our leaders, from the President down, sending their children overseas, going overseas for medical attention, holidays. Three things arise from this- it means one, you have to steal enough money to cover the expenses or to maintain the lifestyle. Two, you insulate yourself from the problems of those you governed. Three, once you insulate yourself from the problems of those you governed, you would not be thinking of solutions to the problems. I asked a question when UNILAG was closed for example, I said, “imagine if our President had one or two children at UNILAG, they would come back home and our President would ask, ‘why are you sitting at home, what is the problem?’ Even if the President doesn’t ask, the children can ask their father, “Daddy can you please do something?” The father will call the Vice Chancellor or the Governing Council. But because we detest ourselves, the school can remain closed for one year. Within that one year period, even the VC would send his or her son to a university outside the country. That’s the challenge. There is crisis in every aspect of our national life-whether it is in education, health, infrastructure and so on. Then, the issue of law and order, the economic crises partly due to the global economic meltdown and mismanagement of the economy over the years and so on had combined to create a cocktail of problems. And if we did not deal with these problems frontally, Nigeria is going to explode into one of the most dangerous places to live in the world, that’s the idea for me. I have taken time to travel around this country, I have taken time to look at many problems confronting us, I have taken time to the different dimensions of the Nigerian crises as a nation. Look, there is no aspect of Nigeria life that is safe.

Do you want to talk about corruption? Look at the revelations. And give it to Buhari, whatever you say about him, that is one aspect of his administration that you can’t, but at least gives thumbs up for because without him, generality of Nigerians will not know the magnitude of corruption in this country. And it’s really a big deal because virtually most of the problems we are going through today can be attributed majorly to corruption. Do you know that if we invest in education, the state government can create infrastructure, build public schools, you can almost instantly employ 100,000 teachers, provide jobs. The government said it want to employ 10,000 policemen, look at the number of people who applied? But for me, that is even not the problem. The problem now is that you have 10,000 people added to your bureaucracy, it means you have to pay 10,000 more salaries, profiled all sorts of employment benefits and so on. You have to train these people. If for any reason, one or two years down the road, you are unable to pay salaries to these people, what do you expect them to do? Many of them would go into crimes. Corruption will be rife and you trained them, arm them at the expense of the state and there is the danger of them using the arm and the training you have given them to be collecting money or killing people. So, as far as Nigeria is concerned, the issue of employment goes beyond saying “I am going to employ this number of people.”

We need to invest in infrastructure. If government is building roads, naturally people would be employed. If government is building rails, naturally people would be employed. If we get our public schools right, there would be more teachers needed. We have about 11 million or so children out of school. Imagine taking 11 million children back to school, the number of teachers, administrators, schools, the structure for them to study, people would have to build those structures, you have to provide all kinds of sundry services around those children. If you go around the country, public education has collapsed. How can you build a nation when the future of your country is not educated? The future we are building is armed robbers, drug addicts, all kinds of criminal elements and we expect the country to survive?

No. So, when you have over 10 million children out of school, it means that country has no future. It means the future you have is a future of Boko Haram, anarchy and so on. So, that is the way I see the disaster. The disaster may not be immediate. Look at what’s happening now- more and more people getting out of school, not having the benefits of education, more women particularly. And you know what they say about getting women educated? If more women don’t have education, you are going to grow a generation of young people who can’t even think. They can’t even think. They don’t understand what it means to live in a nation as diverse as Nigeria. Every simple trouble becomes a crisis. In an okada incident recently, a young man, an active member of the civil society, going home, allegedly hit an Okada driver (motorcyclist) and I heard the Okada driver was okay, nothing happened to him. The guy got down to say sorry and people descended on him and he was stabbed to death. You got a feeling that we are living a stone age, that this is a country of Barbarians. But these are the things that education can help solve. When you grow a generation of young men and women with very little education, you are going to get anarchy and disaster at the end of the day.

But there is also another part of this problem which is even about the health of young people. And I have been doing some work with UNICEF around the issue of malnutrition for example. The number of young people in Nigeria who dies from malnutrition and malnutrition is not just about your physical appearance, maybe a bloated belly and all that. In fact, the major issue is mental, because you now see somebody who is 10 years old and is unable to understand what a 10 years old should understand. So, it means you are growing a generation of people who may be able to function physically, but not mentally incapable. So, these are the challenges that I think we face as a people and until we sit down and confront them, treat them holistically- not the problem of the East, of the South or whatever. We see it as the problem of Nigeria. For me, I do not subscribe to those saying this country should split for many reasons.

He is clearly patrician in the way he acquires and disseminates knowledge but his general lifestyles are very simple but cool. BJ, as he is fondly called by many people, loves words— Yoruba and English—which he uses inexhaustibly. He also loves big ideas which he invests in and wrestles with endlessly. Born and bred in Ibadan seventy years ago, Jeyifo’s childhood was tempestuous because he made many considerable efforts in resistance to the codes of conduct imposed on him by his immediate society. His non conformity and rebellion could have damaged him irreparably but for his sharp brain anchored in intense and wide-ranging readings. He is one good example of a man saved by literature.

Today, he is an eminent, highly gifted and respected scholar teaching Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Jeyifo was one of the pioneers of radical, Marxist Literary tradition in African universities. He was also the first National president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities in Nigeria. With incredible courage, commitment and intellectual panache he led a winning team of unionists—among who were Festus Iyayi, Mahmud Tukur, Dipo Fasina and T.U. Nwala. He has taught at the universities of Ibadan, Ife and Cornell. Between January 21 and 22 2016 at the Conference Centre of the Obafemi Awolowo University—formerly University of Ife—, Ile-Ife, ideological soul-mates, academics, journalists, students and friends of Professor Jeyifo gathered to celebrate his 70th birthday. It was an impressive turn –out.

The conveners led by Dr Wumi Raji, chose ‘’Complexity of Freedom’’ as the conference theme. Speaker after speaker engaged Jeyifo’s scholarship, pedagogy and radical politics of the Marxian variety. Some were unfairly but respectfully critical, many were deeply appreciative. He would have taken issues with his unfair critics but the moral burden of being the rallying point prevented that. He listened to some misinterpretations of his ideas in silence. The energetic defender of noble causes and people simply refrained from speaking to defend himself. When the conference, dance, play, dinner and banters were all over thatnight of 22 January, KUNLE AJIBADE, Executive Editor of TheNEWS magazine and PM NEWS had a conversation with BIODUN JEYIFO which stretched till the wee hours of the morning of 23 January. Excerpts:

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: The celebration of your 70th birthday started on January 5 at the University of Ibadan. We just had a stimulating conference in Ile-Ife on your life and work. In April, the African Literature Association (ALA) will do a special session on you at its 2 annual conference for 2016. How do you feel about all this?
A: I am very appreciative. Normally, I am not really cut out for observing anniversaries. It is a sentiment that I am not used to. I celebrated my 60th birthday anniversary ten years ago only because some friends and former students organised it – you were one of the conspirators! But I do feel very appreciative and deeply humbled by the outpouring of genuine affection, respect, and acknowledgment of the nature and quality of my work. I am overwhelmed. No professor, no intellectual, and even non-intellectual can say that he or she would not, on any day, respond positively and movingly to genuine expressions of admiration and respect for his or her work and life. The other dimension of my response to the honour and the recognition is that it makes me reflect on the nature of my work and its reception – the kind of expectations that, apparently, my work has stirred in my former students and readership in all parts of the world, that aspect is a little more complex than the simple joy, the simple appreciation, and the simple sense of gratification.

Q: Can you share with me your thoughts on this dimension of the reception of your work and the expectations it has generated in readers?
A: Let me give you an example. For instance, in the combined panel on my work as a theorist and critic and as a public intellectual, there were at least four or five presentations that, were I not the object of discussion, I would have interrogated strongly and robustly. I won’t mention the panellists now because doing so will make it seem as if I do not appreciate them and that I have begun to pick holes in their presentations. Simply on intellectual grounds, on ideological grounds, there were about four or five in that panel of eight or nine, that I would have engaged very rigorously. There they were making critical assessments of my work and as the person honoured I had to take it all in. Although on the whole there was not a single person on the panel who didn’t express admiration and respect but the respect was also critically articulated and this generated in me an impulse to engage critically with them! But you will agree with me that it would have been an act of a lack of grace on my part to have said to any of the panellists: “what are you saying”? That is what I mean.

Q: After Professor Attahiru Jega’s moving lecture you said that the celebration meant to you a re-dedication to all the great values that you have always held very dear. Could you expatiate on this?
A: Actually that is the subject of my column in The Nation this coming Sunday (January 24, 2016). I wrote it last night. Of course, I had meant to write on a different subject before I came to Ife for the celebrations because I knew that once I got to Ife, I wouldn’t have the time, the space and I have never failed for a single week to send my column on time, not once. I started writing the column in 2007 and I have never failed to send my column on schedule and I wasn’t going to fail this time. So in order not to fail to write the column this week, I decided to write about the Ibadan and Ife celebrations. In the piece that I wrote and sent off to my editor at The Nation earlier today, I spoke on this subject of celebration as rededication. What I mean by re-dedication is that when people express admiration, acknowledgement or respect for certain qualities in you, certain aspects of your achievements, certain things in your person that they find admirable, they are also expressing the hope that you will retain the qualities, the values they admire and respect in you and your work – a sort of “ma feyi sopin”! In other words, they’re saying these things that we admire and respect in you, we hope that time and old age will not change you from what we know you to be. Also – and this is important — those who ask this rededication of you are also, although more implicitly, rededicating themselves to the same values. I call it a mutual pact of re-dedication: “We expect these attributes and values to continue to be manifested in you. This is what we like in you; on our own part, because we have found these things in you inspiring, we ourselves also hereby rededicate ourselves to the values, the attributes”. Let me put this idea in concrete political and moral terms: “we are re-dedicating our lives to struggle for a country – our country – that will be free of oppression, of “ireje”, of looting, of poverty and insecurity of life. Here, I will allude to a term from cultural anthropology to say, in this respect, that celebration as an act of re-dedication is a kind of ritual process, in the sense that, in social and cultural rituals, all the participants, all the communicants who go through the ritual process are not the same people who come out of it by the end of the ritual because they are transformed, they are renewed, they re-dedicate themselves to the values they have celebrated during the ritual process itself.

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: How do you manage to combine the rigour of your academic exertions with all the demands and responsibilities of your participation in the public space as an intellectual?
A: Actually, I think that perhaps too much is made of the rigour. Look, you have a passion for doing something, and you get paid for doing it, and also you get public recognition for doing it – that is an added bonus! These are all things that I would do anyway. This is part of who I am. I know what people say – Osofisan often says to me, “I don’t know how you are able to write this column every week”. But I do it because I want to do it. Nobody is forcing me to do it. I feel obliged to do it. Initially, it took a lot of discipline. When I was with The Guardian, the deadline for submitting my column was Thursday; that was a little bit tougher because I teach only on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Harvard. So meeting The Guardian’s deadline of Thursday evening was a little tough for me so that when I migrated to The Nation, I arranged to have my deadline changed to Fridays. Anywhere I am in the world, except it is an emergency that takes me to hospital either for myself or someone else, I know that on Friday morning, I must spend X hours writing my column and I don’t compromise on it. It has become a habit. It only seems to be a rigorous demand. It is, in a way, but it is something you have to discipline yourself to do. At any rate, I will do it because I have a passion for it. Maybe also, in simple, straightforward terms — this may seem like self-advertisement, self-aggrandizement — I am a workaholic. My domestic partner — she is an anthropologist — complains endlessly about my workaholic lifestyle but she knows that she knows that she has a powerful enemy in my workaholic lifestyle! It is like an addiction but in a positive sense. In high school, I was not that serious. I was more of an “ipata”, a rascal. I was satisfied to be among the first eight in the class, not the first, second or third pupil in the class, from primary school to high school. I was never first, second or third.

Q: Was it a deliberate act?
A: It wasn’t deliberate. It was just that I read mostly for pleasure. I didn’t read in order to pass exams. I passed so easily that I wasn’t bothered about who was going to be first in the class and this attitude persisted up to my high school years. It was in UI, even more so in graduate school, that I became a very studious student, a very diligent student and the workaholic ethic grabbed me and it has never left me. So it has become a kind of habit. And it has become pleasurable.

Q: At that point, what was the motivation?
A: Though, I didn’t become a dedicated and self-motivated student in high school, I attended all the famous public debates and lectures in Ibadan – USIS, British Council, Obisesan Hall. When I was in primary school, the great Zik of Africa came to speak and I went to hear him speak. All the firebrand nationalists and trade union leaders came to speak at these lecture halls and I went to hear them speak. I started from all of that. But it was in graduate school that I began to read with seriousness. Before then, I read voraciously, I read everything I could lay my hands on, but not with an intention to do extra well in class. I didn’t care as long as I didn’t slip pass the tenth position in the class of about 25 pupils. My father and mother hated this because they knew I could do much better if I put my mind to it, but I myself didn’t have that inclination.

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: I am raising this question because in your tribute to Professor Dapo Adelugba, you actually spoke about that great impact he had on you in terms of looking up to him as someone who motivated you at that point when you were in Ibadan Boys High School. How did he motivate you?
A: I differentiate that from what happened later when I was in graduate school. People called Professor Dapo Adelugba “Uncle D” but I called him “Brother Dapo” because he was an area or neighbourhood elder brother at Oke-Bola. He and Mr. Nelson Olawaiye both discovered that I was well known for getting into trouble. For instance, it was a taboo to go and swim at Alalubosa Lake because many kids drowned there. That was where I learnt how to swim. But apart from knowing about my notoriety for getting into trouble, Uncle D and Mr. Olawaiye also discovered that I had a passion for reading and they encouraged me a lot in this habit. And I also looked up to them. Uncle D was at Government College and he spoke English with a kind of diction, a kind of accent we considered superb. So, he was a role model in the sense of spotting in me a love of reading and encouraging it a lot. In contrast, take someone like Mr. Modupe Oduyoye who was my teacher at Ibadan Boys High School. He clocked 80 last year. I wrote a tribute to him. He tried to get me to become a serious student in a more structured way because he knew I could do much better than being sixth or seventh in the class. In that sense, my tutelage under Mr. Oduyoye was like a foreshadowing of what I was later to meet in my mentors at New York University, NYU. Mr. Oduyoye said to me, “you are cutting yourself short; you can do much better than this. You can be more structured in your work”. That is what makes a difference.

Q: At the University of Ibadan, you were not just a serious student in terms of being structured in the attention you paid to your studies but you also played hard. Do you want to reflect on your years at UI?
A: Yes, I played very hard in my undergraduate days at U.I. But in my first year, I got the English departmental prize. It was a prestigious prize. At that time in U.I. the prize was offered twice in the course of going through the English department as a student. There was a prize in the first and last years and I got it on both occasions in my set. So you would have taught that having won the departmental prize in the first year, I was going to start thinking that I would make a first class. No, that didn’t occur to me at all. You see, from primary school to high school, I always came first in English Language and Literature – and History. Quite frankly, after winning the departmental prize in the first year, I knew that I would make 2.1 (Upper Second) but honestly, I did not have my mind fixated on getting a First. By the way, I was the third to get First Class in the history of the department. It was so rare to get First Class in the department of English in UI. I learnt that no one got it after me for about 30 years. Getting the departmental prize in my first year did not spur me to say that I would focus exclusively on my studies in order to get First Class at all cost. So instead of sitting down and studying hard, I got involved in all kinds of extra-curricular activities, so to say. I was in student politics and became Public Relations Officer of the Students Union. I was in the Student Dramatic Society and acted in many plays on the stage and on television. I was in The Pyrates Confraternity. I even played soccer and was a member of the Kuti Hall football team that won the Inter-Hall competition for 1968. Indeed, I won the Kuti Hall Masters Prize for 1970 for being the best “all-rounder” in the hall. The way I see it now is that getting the English departmental prize in the first year should have inspired me to think of becoming a lecturer. But that is not what happened. I didn’t think of what I would do after graduation. I had also got admission into UNILAG to read Law. From the time I was in primary school, people would tell me that I would be a lawyer; it got to my head. But that never happened. It was in graduate school that it occurred to me that I would be a lecturer, and that I would be an intellectual. That was when I became more disciplined, and more structured but throughout UI, it wasn’t the case. For instance, I wrote a tribute to Professor Ayo Banjo in which I reflected on this particular aspect of my experience as a student of English at U.I. Professor Banjo was my teacher in English Language, not English Literature. Well, Banjo sort of put the fear of rigorous intellectualism in me because he taught us structural linguistics and transformational grammar. The thing was a complete mystery to me because it is very scientific. It is the most scientific aspect of the study of language. I tried everything I could to get a grasp of it but until I left U.I. even with a First Class, the finer points, the intricacies of transformational grammar eluded me. It was when I got to graduate school that I said ‘’this thing that Banjo tried to teach us and I didn’t fully understand, let me now finally come to grips with it’’. Only about four of us understood what Banjo was teaching us and it wasn’t because he was a bad teacher; it was simply that the material was tough going. Before Banjo’s classes in structural linguistics and transformational grammar, for me grammar had just been how to put sentences together syntactically in order to write correct English. That was what I understood grammar to be but transformational grammar insists on the conditions under which you produce a sentence that is “right” in terms of the structure of the language even if, semantically, the sentence is wrong sentence or even meaningless. This baffled me as at that time. I just said, this is not for me. Until Ibadan gave me a scholarship after getting a First Class, I didn’t really think of what I would do post- graduation. Because, then, in any way, you got job at NBC and you got a car immediately, and you got a house. I also participated in lots of quiz competitions and won lots of prizes. In short, I had no real intention to be a teacher but in graduate school before I finished my PhD, I got married and became determined to be an academic. The year before I finished my PhD, I had a son, Okunola, in 1974 and then I had to go and teach in order to augment the bursary that I was getting from the U.I. scholarship so as to support my new family. It was then I thought that teaching might be a life vocation. I taught at Queens College of the City University of New York; I taught at Hunter College and Pace University, which was a private college. That was when I knew that I was very good at teaching. I loved teaching and the students liked my classes immensely.

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q; Even at the point of choosing UI over UNILAG, it never occurred to you what you were going to become?
A: No, not at all. Let me give you one interesting aside here, I don’t know if I have ever told you about this. In my final year at Ibadan Boys High School, every school in the Western Region sent two students — two for science, and two for arts — to do the entrance exam for higher school in GCI and I passed. But before the letter of admission came, I had been expelled from Ibadan Boys High School. They didn’t let me see the letter. But someone in the principal’s office surreptitiously made a copy of the letter of admission and gave it to me. So, I went to D. J. Bullock, the legendary Principal of GCI, to present myself and to pay the ten pounds deposit for the two-year HSC course at GCI. As I was dressed in school uniform, Bullock asked, “Where are you coming from?” I replied, from school. He said no, you are not coming from school and he fished out a letter from a file on his desk from Mr Laseinde, my principal, who had written Bullock to inform him that I had been expelled and that the offer of admission to me should be withdrawn. Bullock told me that I wrote the best essay among all the applicants in the Western Region for admission to HSC at Government College that year. With such a disclosure, I thought that if they had adjudged me to have written the best essay among the applicants, I should eventually go and read English. Government College then was an enormously prestigious institution. So, for Bullock to have said to me, “You are welcome to GCI and you can forget what your principal has said as long as you don’t come to GCI to do the kind of thing for which you got expelled from your school”. I think that sort of prepared me for the choice of English as the subject I would read at U.I. Interestingly, this was all rather comparable to the time when I received the letter of admission into UI which coincided exactly with the time that Soyinka resigned from UNILAG to come to UI. That also played a role in my choice of going to U.I. to read English. Soyinka then was not the towering Nobel Prize figure he is now; and I had actually not read anything by him with the exception of one or two newspaper articles. And he was then a young man. All I was interested in was a rascally figure that was super articulate.

Q: In short, your own rascality attracted you his Soyinka’s rascality. Is that right?
A: Non-conformism, I would call it.

Q: I was just leading you to talk more of why you didn’t choose law in spite of all the pressure mounted by your immediate family members?
A: One other factor, to be frank, was that at that period even If I had wanted to read law, it was very rare to turn down an offer from the great UI to go to the University of Lagos. You had to have had a Rotimi Williams as a father who wanted you by all means to succeed him as a lawyer in the family law business.

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: Why didn’t you eventually go to Government College for your HSC?
A: Two things happened. One, that very year, the set of lower six admitted in 1965 to GCI which would have been my set (I don’t remember the exact reason now) were transferred to Comprehensive School, Aiyetoro, but I didn’t want to go to Aiyetoro; I wanted to go to Government College. Second, which is more complicated, I had not told my father that I had been dismissed from Ibadan Boys High School. Mr Laseinde, the Principal, who was also the organist at St James Cathedral saw my father and apologised to him for expelling me from school and explained what I did that called for the expulsion. At that time, it was the height of disgrace to be expelled from school. It is like you have no future. “Ipata e yi ti take e over patapata”, meaning “this rascality of yours has taken you over completely”. For that reason, my father said that he would not send me to the school for the HSC even if I passed the school leaving exams – which I did. I had a sister in the UK who was a nurse who sent me the ten pounds for deposit and promised to sponsor my HSC education. But once they then transferred that set in 1965 from GCI to Aiyetoro (Arts not Science), I said, forget it, I am going to spend the next two years studying, do the A levels as a private student and enter UI the same year as my set. So, I did GCE A ‘Level on my own and entered UI as an undergraduate the same time that the students in my set who went to Aiyetoro also entered university.

Q: When did you finally meet Wole Soyinka? And what kind of a teacher was he?
A: Soyinka didn’t come to UI when we all eagerly awaited his coming. They sent him to prison in 1967, the year I was admitted to U.I. The civil war broke out that same year, and Soyinka went to Biafra in a last ditch effort to avert the war, as we all know now. He was arrested upon his return from Biafra so he couldn’t come to resume his position until my last year, 1969. Soyinka was a great and inspiring teacher but in a very special kind of a way. He was a hugely charismatic teacher, but he wasn’t always present in the class. Adelugba and Adedeji covered up for him most of the time. But the times when he came to class, he was incredibly stimulating. The class he taught me was Dramatic Criticism and he was great. I think in a whole semester, maybe he came two or three times. That was all. He rarely came to class and other people were doing his teaching obligations for him. But you must remember that that was his time of intense and prodigious creativity. He came to class two or three times and that was all I had of him as a teacher.

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: You were also very busy as a teacher but you never missed your classes. Why are you making excuses for Soyinka?
A: Yes, I didn’t miss my classes and I don’t mean to make any excuses for Soyinka, but you see, the only one full length play I ever wrote was Haba, Director!, an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Herr Puntilla and his Man Matti. I wasn’t busy writing the best plays of my writing career which was what was happening to Soyinka. I place great value on that. Of course my classmates hated it because they wanted to have the great man teach them himself and not have other teachers standing in for him. Moreover, perhaps without doing so deliberately, Soyinka tended to “segregate” the best students from the rest and he had a tendency of addressing himself to the “select” group. He could be very dismissive, though I don’t think he did it deliberately. The students that weren’t self-confident, that didn’t think they were “smart” enough, they were terrified of speaking in Soyinka’s classes and they would be saying that he was speaking only to Sawyer, BJ, Somoye; he would be looking mostly at us. I was never cut out to be that kind of teacher whose work as a creative writer of the highest order was, when all is said and done, his main tools for teaching. It was in my last year at U.I. that Soyinka became my official supervisor before I went to NYU. Frankly, he was not your regular kind of teacher, but he gave a lot if you knew how to make room for his special way of teaching.

Q: You also acted in his play?
A: Yes, I did. I was in both the stage play and the film version of Kongi’s Harvest. I appear for only 15 to 30 seconds in the film as a member of the Carpenter’s Brigade because Soyinka used the members of the Pyrates Confraternity for the Carpenters’ Brigade in the film. In the stage version, I was the Camp Superintendent, and at the celebrations at the Arts Theatre, U.I. two weeks ago, I narrated something that turned out to be nearly a disaster in my participation in the staging of the play when I was drunk and very nearly missed my cue for coming onstage to perform my role in the production. WS was scandalized by this, as he should have been! This happened in my last year. Soyinka came to UI in 1969. It was the beginning of my last term as an undergraduate. When I then went to Tafawa Balewa Hall as a postgraduate student and Soyinka became my supervisor, I wanted to play a part in his Madmen and Specialists. He had not forgotten or forgiven me for that near disaster of the staging of Kongi’s Harvest. When I showed up for the casting of the new play, Madmen and Specialists, Soyinka said to me, “you, out!” Except again, irony upon irony, after the last night of the production, I sat down, analysed both the play and stage production and showed my review to Soyinka. He apparently liked it very much. He said to me, “You should go and publish it”. But it was enough for me that I had written an analysis of the play and the production and that he liked what I had written; I didn’t send it anywhere for publication. Soyinka was sending for me asking if I had sent the review for publication and this went on until he finally grabbed a copy and had it published it in Daily Sketch. This is the man that had thrown me out of the casting rehearsal for the production! He liked my review so much that he sent it to Daily Sketch to be published. I was later told by Niyi Osundare that that review of Madmen and Specialists became one of the standard texts of the dramatic criticism class taught by Professor Joel Adedeji. Niyi Osundare was two years behind me and that review of Madmen and Specialists that I wrote was used as one of the required reading texts for his class when they were taught by the late Joel Adedeji. Up till today, Niyi still teases me by quoting some embarrassing lines of highfalutin English from that review.

Q: Talking of the complexity of renderings of your own interpretation of Wole Soyinka’s works, Odia Ofeimun in his presentation celebrated you as a denizen of the forest but Professor Femi Osofisan said in jest, ‘’One day I will have to translate your book on Soyinka into simple English’’. In other words, it appears that when you enter the forest of Wole Soyinka’s books you are taken over by the thick forest as you too become so complex. In contrast when you enter Chinua Achebe’s savannah, you are the most lucid. What do you say to that?
A: People conveniently choose the aspect of my work that pleases them and ignore others. I dare anybody to say that any single essay in The Truthful Lie is difficult, convoluted, and they are no less powerful essays for that reason. I must admit, if I were to rewrite the book on Soyinka, Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism, if I were to write it again, I would be writing in a different kind of critical idiom. Since that book came out, I have generally striven to write, without compromising intellectual depth and rigour, in a more lucid style. It is a gift, the ability to write lucidly without sacrificing intellectual depth. It doesn’t come to you naturally to use language well and you use it with lucidity but also with depth – as Chinua Achebe consistently did. I strive for it, it doesn’t come easily. The Truthful Lie was my second book. I didn’t discover lucidity with Achebe, it was something that came with an attitude to language usage and the burden of language with regards to social activism depending on the occasion because all the essays without exception in The Truthful Lie derived from positions taken on an ideological terrain and I needed clarity to establish those grounds. They were driven by that and they were all polemical pieces. It was John La Rose, who came to Nigeria and said oh my God, we must publish these essays. I just wrote those essays in the book, delivered them as fighting, polemical pieces at different places including Ife, Zaria, Ibadan, Ilorin and Nsukka. To cut a long story short, I think people miss that. When Osofisan was saying jocularly that he is going to translate the book on Wole Soyinka from English to English, I could have shouted, well you can get some help in accomplishing that task by going back to read The Truthful Lie!

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: Professor Tejumola Olaniyan, one of your former students, both at Ife and in Cornell University, in his tribute to you described you as Professor “O le gan ni o” (It is tough and challenging beyond measure!) And many people in the audience laughed to that. Why are you such a tough teacher, a task master, an ‘’O le gan ni o’’ teacher?
A: As I don’t want to be self-justifying or self-aggrandizing about this, let me treat this question carefully. You see, for me, it doesn’t matter the surface complexity or on the other hand, surface lucidity of a text, of any text, I take its interpretation and analysis very seriously. Let me illustrate what I have in mind here by using the example of classical Greek drama. Nothing could be simpler in form, language, and content than the plays in this tradition of dramatic writing. The plays are extraordinarily simple in content, form, style, and language but what about the consistency of intellectual depth that we encounter in them? A student approaches that and mistakes the lucidity for simplicity, or even simple mindedness. He or she can’t see the depth beneath the surface lucidity. In one form or the other, what I always tell my graduate students, which may explain this “o le gan ni” phenomenon is this: “In order for you not to be intellectually slack as you write your term paper or even your dissertation, pose to yourself the strongest possible objections that anyone who doesn’t take your position can make to your paper”. Quite often, the response that I get from most students, even those at a fairly advanced stage of writing is that they think and think and they can’t come up with what could be the strongest possible objection to their work. To this non-response to my challenge, I ask, “what about somebody who hates Marxism, the theoretical and ideological framework of your dissertation; what if somebody who is anti-feminist slyly uses that antagonism to feminism to undercut the analyses and claims that you make in your dissertation that draw their inspiration from feminism? What if somebody who is a poststructuralist says this glorification of realism in your dissertation is naïve and simplistic and dismisses everything that you say in the dissertation? If you have not anticipated that objection, you are cornered and probably finished in your defence of your dissertation or the talk that you give for consideration for a post in the job market. If you anticipate the possible strongest objections, well, that puts you in a position to at least deal quite easily with weaker objections to the analyses, the claims that you make in what you write as a budding academic, critic or theorist. If you are focused exclusively on the things that you find fulfilling in what you write, the things that come to you easily and you have found pleasurable in writing your dissertation and you don’t anticipate the things that other scholars, for whatever reasons, may find objectionable in your writing, you may have a problem defending what you have written when the critiques, the reviews come. I suppose this method of training advanced graduate students and younger or junior colleagues is partly the product of the kind of training I myself went through in graduate school in advanced graduate seminars. But more fundamentally, I think it is also a question of sensibility because I remember even back to my Ibadan Boys High School days, there was always a Friday afternoon session with the school principal at the end of the week, you know question and answer time between us, students and the school principal. From form three to my last year in form five, everybody in the school waited for my questions at these sessions because the principal always found my questions intriguing, perhaps even challenging. At any rate, the principal always waited for me to ask my question or questions and if on any occasion I was silent, he would call out, “Jeyifous, have you no questions this week?” I confess that even this far removed from that experience that happened more than five decades ago, I remember distinctly the pleasure that this weekly verbal dalliance with the principal gave me, especially since it was the same principal that eventually expelled me from the school in 1964! That’s why I think that this matter of “O le gan ni” must also be a matter of sensibility, a matter of a certain disposition to language, to critical intellection. At any rate, all I know is that when I became a serious student, I cultivated this intellectual habit of not taking things for granted, of not thinking that maybe because your cause is just, politically or intellectually, then you must not pay attention to the intricacies of your arguments, to the underlying premises of your reasoning. If you do pay attention to these things, you are saving yourself from a fall or an intellectual embarrassment because people who hate your politics or your ideology or the things you are fighting for will find ways to pick holes in your argument and then they will use that to go after you, which is their real purpose in mounting arguments against your intellectual and ideological positions. They will fault you for sloppy reasoning, your inattention to the necessity of supporting your claims with sound reasoning. That is the background to the “O le gan ni” phenomenon. I must say that Teju wasn’t using it pejoratively.

Q: Not at all. Indeed, Teju proposed that our country will be a lot better if we use the “O le gan ni” idea, if we apprehend our realities, in an “O le gan ni o” way. Do you also see it that way?

A: I do. The theme of this two-day event in Ife, The Complexity of Freedom, which comes from the title of one of my collections of essays on Soyinka, is precisely that if you have a passion for justice, for human freedom and human emancipation, you must arm yourself with sound intellectual arguments to defend them. This is because the justness of your cause doesn’t mean that it will automatically prevail. You have to prepare the ground. Again, I learnt some of these lessons or truths from ASUU when I was its National President. I had to do thorough work to make sure that in our memos, our position papers, we trumped the federal government’s positions in our agitations, our activism for better conditions of funding and academic freedom on our campuses. During our many encounters with them, the Federal Government would bring the Committee of Vice Chancellors against us, but we floored them because we had done our homework thoroughly. We never lost a single contention with the Federal Government, never. We were so well prepared, we baffled them. It wasn’t magic; we just set out to do a very thorough job. That is the dimension of the complexity of freedom that I am interested in.

Prof Biodun Jeyifo

Q: What is your take on what Sam Omatseye described as the crisis and anxiety of post-Marxist world reflected in your journalism?
A: Sam Omatseye is correct, but only in a very abstract and generalised sense; he is not correct in any kind of concrete, demonstrable sense that I find applicable to my work, especially my political and cultural journalism. The crisis for me is not that of being a Marxist in a post-Marxist world. Omatseye was for the most part speaking about what I write in my column in The Nation, the Talakawa Liberation Herald series. In that column, I write in a way that I hardly ever directly mention socialism, I hardly ever talk about capitalism, but only a fool would not know that that is what I am writing about. You see, for me there is no need to breast beat that I am a Marxist or that I am a socialist or to throw theoretical and ideological jargon around. So, I say loudly that I have no crisis or anxiety of being a Marxist in a putatively post-Marxist world. No, no, no. Once they label you as this or that, that is the end of the discussion, the end of the road. If they label you a communist, that is the worst. They will say, look at all the communist regimes, haven’t they failed, haven’t they done terrible things and haven’t they, in one way or another, turned away from communism? With that calculated tactic, my attempts to make my country, my society better will be delegitimized by the intellectual laziness and ideological fraudulence of saying that we want to bring North Korea here, we want to bring Stalinism here. Absolute rubbish. Omatseye does not of course belong to this order of virulent anti-Marxism. But that order does exist and in reaction to it, it is a tactic on my part not to talk about socialism but everybody on the left knows that I am speaking for them. The second aspect of my response to this question of being Marxist in a post-Marxist world is the one that I tried to speak about during the Ibadan celebrations on January 5. I don’t think I was clear enough about this aspect when I spoke about it on that occasion when I said I wanted to tell a secret about the Talakawa series in The Nation. You see, the secret is this: part of the time, I am actually writing for self-clarification in the Talakawa Liberation series. In other words, I don’t write that series with the attitude, the perspective of one who knows and is providing the answers. I am very serious about this, to the extent that I do declare here and now that it is in the process of writing that I actually make some discoveries, that I think through some tough questions, think through on how best to present my positions. How do I break down complex ideas, complex issues and make them understandable? That is the general task that I set myself in The Nation column. I think I have gotten better at doing this in The Nation than when I wrote the series in The Guardian. At any rate, that is my own general sense. Sometimes, I am frustrated by a feeling that I have not done enough work to clarify an issue that I set out to engage. But for the most part, I am content, though not in a self-satisfied, smug manner. In a very generalised sense, this profile of what I am trying to achieve in the Talakawa Liberation series in The Nation is applicable to the so-called post-Marxist conundrum. This is because nowadays in most parts of the world, leftists, socialists, radicals see it as a sort of liability to label themselves Marxists. Let me illustrate what I am saying here by alluding to something that happened personally to me in connection with this thing about being Marxist in a so-called post-Marxist world. When I was going to Harvard from Cornell University, the President of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, got the Dean of the Faculty of Arts to ask me to explain my Marxism. You know, “Isn’t this a contamination that this man is bringing to Harvard?” He didn’t literally say that but that was the implication: we must keep Marxism out of here or keep it policed, watched. I narrated this experience to some colleagues at Harvard as recently as about six months ago at a social gathering for the young scholars of the department. I told them that I was made to write something about my Marxism when I was coming to Harvard from Cornell. I told them that I wrote a tongue-in-cheek memo which I titled, “Who is afraid of BJ’s Marxism?” And I sent it to the Dean at Harvard. Obviously, the demand for me to offer an explanation for my Marxism came from a feeling that Marxism is some kind of strange and foreign invasion from a past that has collapsed and vanished forever. In my tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic memo titled “Who is afraid of BJ’s Marxism” I said, wait a minute, Marxism has a long, more than 200-year history that is still evolving and there are many schools of Marxism – Western Marxism; Non-Western Marxism; other schools of thought or ideological orientation that are not Marxist but are in dialogue with Marxism. In my memo to the Dean of the Arts and Sciences Faculty at Harvard, I said that in my classes, I explore all of these traditions within and outside Marxism. Altogether then, Marxism influences ideas that power my conception, my tactics of how to go about the struggles that we wage as Nigerians and human beings for justice and opportunities for the dispossessed. But Marxism is not the only tradition of thought and inquiry that influences me. And I am not a dogmatic Marxist. And most important of all, I don’t think Marxism ever belonged exclusively or even predominantly to the Eastern bloc that collapsed after the end of the Cold War; neither does it belong exclusively to the past. So in response to your question, Omatseye is wrong in projecting to me crises and anxieties that I do not in the least have. Marxism is an approach and a philosophical view of human society and history that has had a profound influence on me, but not in a dogmatic sense.

Q: At what point in your life did you discover Marxism? And what is your response to those who say, Socialism is dead. Long live Capitalism?

A: Interestingly, it was in America, when I was a graduate student in my early to mid-20s that I discovered Marxism and read very, very widely in both its Western and Non-Western schools or traditions and in all subjects and disciplines – philosophy; politics; social theory; psychoanalysis; art and criticism; revolutions and revolutionary movements. I read enough to last two lifetimes! At the same time, I read widely in other traditions of thought – comparative religion; structuralism and poststructuralism; Pan Africanism; Eastern philosophies and religion. That period was probably the most idyllic period of my whole life when I had the motivation, the drive and the opportunity to read as widely and as ecumenically as I wanted to or could. So with this sort of background, how could I ever be a dogmatic Marxist? There probably was a period in my young adulthood when I absolutely insisted on being seen as a Marxist – perhaps the Ibadan and Ife years. But since then, I have shifted tactics: my absolute insistence now is that I be taken, I be judged on how consistent I am with my passion for redistributive justice in our country and our world. So don’t say to me, “Are you a Marxist?” Say to me, “Are you true to your professed belief in justice and dignity for the dispossessed of our country, our continent and our world?” On that basis, I must say that the question whether socialism is dead or not does not really interest me; what interests me is: what is the state of social justice in our country and our world? As for those who say, “long live capitalism”, I say, have you taken a recent look at the state, the ill-health, the severe crises in and of global, regional, national and local capitalisms recently?

Q: You have also been quite interested, even excited about the need for an inter-generational conversation between younger and older Nigerians in all areas of our public life, literature and the arts; politics; popular culture; and present conditions and future prospects for everybody, young and old. Do you want to speak to that?
A: Yes. You notice that one thing I do, one special category of articles I publish in my column, both when I was in The Guardian and now in The Nation, is that every time that a major intellectual, artistic or political figure dies, I write about him or her; and also, I write an appreciation when he or she celebrates a major birthday milestone. There is a reason for that and the reason speaks to this inter- generational conversation. You see, I am trying in such writings to re-introduce to our younger compatriots Nigerians of exceptional achievement in all areas among the older generation, especially those that came before my generation. I write to make them known to the new generation by writing about them. One thing that progressive forces all over the world always face is the temptation to see the historic task before them as if they have to reinvent the wheel. They don’t know what has gone before they arrived on the scene. They don’t have intimate knowledge of the great people and inspiring things that happened in the past, even the recent past. Indeed, Kunle, I see your own persistent plea to me: “Write your memoir, BJ; please write this memoir, BJ” in light of this same imperative of an inter-generational conversation. I will write the memoir, Kunle, but meanwhile, I am writing about figures and trends that went before my own generation arrived on the scene. I especially like the piece that I wrote on Professor Omafume Onoge when he died. It was a three-part series. And I very carefully wrote on trends and moments of transition in the evolution of the Left in Nigeria so that the younger people can become aware of that history. Because any generation, especially present and future generations of young people, if they have no point of reference from the past, points of reference about those who came before them, problems which should not scare them will scare them; problems which are simple, they will blow out of proportion; and “problems” that are not really problems at all, they will say they are problems. That is one. Number two, which is far more critical for me in this issue of an inter-generational dialogue, there is what I would call the coeval connection between all the generations that are alive at any particular historical moment. By the way, the intuition for this came from the bible not from Marx. (I was General Secretary of Students Christian Movement of all the secondary schools in Ibadan in the last two years of my secondary school days. Indeed, I have a long history with Christianity which I have since abandoned, or more appropriately, it abandoned me because it stopped making meaning and sense to me, in trying to understand my world, our world) But concerning this aspect of inter-generational challenge, Christ said that before the present generation shall have passed away, the son of man shall come again. By this Christ meant that the second coming was not in some distance future, it was liberation from Roman and local oppressors. Judea was a part of Roman Empire and the people were oppressed by Rome and also by the Pharisees and local landlords. This revolutionary, this historical figure, Christ, took a whip to the temple to chase out the money changers, the capitalists. So what I want to extract, when he said, “Before this living generation shall have passed away”, is this: any living generation is composed of many inter-generational components who are in dialogue with one another or should be. In other words, a living generation is composed of many generational cohorts, about four or five at any one time and we should all be in a dialogue with one another. It is not as if I am calling for something which is not part of the social fabric in human experience. What I am calling for should be made more conscious, it should be made more critical. I got irritated when people started talking about first generation, second generation, third generation in Nigerian literature, as if they are just discreet segments that are totally isolated from one another – which is completely false. When Christ said “before the present generation shall pass away”, he was talking of everybody alive and if you look at any society at any point in time, the living generation runs the whole gamut from the youngest to the oldest. It is usually about three to four normally segmented generations who are always involved in one form or another of inter-generational conversation among themselves. But at any rate, that for me is a critical factor in that it is not as if one generation has completely died and another one is alive; no, we are all still coeval, alive at the same time and responsible for what we leave to the future. Especially since we have just emerged, that is relatively speaking from orality. As rich and powerful as oral cultures can be in many acts of recording, chanting and performing memory and imagination, they are very fragile in one sense: they don’t keep records well. They only kept records among specialists, those who can memorise 2000 lines of poetry, the bards, and they were always jealous about maintaining control over this art, this function. It wasn’t something that was widely and culturally distributed. Now that we have written cultures, we ought to make the most of this inter-generational dimension. The last thing I will say – and this as a sort of auto-critique or self-criticism – is that I am not doing enough of reading and commentary on the younger writers. I hope to be doing a lot of that when I retire in a couple of years from now – very actively reading, sensitive and supportive, but also critical reading of the younger writers because it suddenly dawned on me not too long ago that most of my critical commentaries have been on the so called first and second generations writers, very little on the third. I teach many of these generational cohorts of the “third” wave in my classes. In fact, in one course I am currently teaching at Harvard, “Film, Fiction and Diaspora”, I teach a greater number of contemporary writers than the older writers. So I need to correct this. I need to put my money where my mouth is. I need to actually back up the demands and obligations I am making on others, on all of us with what I do in my own work in furtherance of this vital intergenerational conversation. Indeed, one of the best sessions at the Ife celebrations, in my opinion, was the one in which Eddie Madunagu and myself had that deep and wide-ranging conversation at the CORA roundtable with the two much younger intellectual compatriots that posed very sharp, searching questions to us.

Professor Femi Osofisan, a playwright, director, actor, critic, poet, novelist, editor and newspaper columnist, has been named winner of the coveted Thalia Prize 2016, the Executive Committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC/AICT) has announced.
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The Thalia Prize, according to the statement published via http://aict-iatc.org/, is meant to highlight the work of those who have helped critics around the globe to understand new ways of seeing and appreciating the performing arts worldwide. The 2016 Thalia Prize will soon be presented to the awardee during the IATC Congress in Belgrade.

The IATC, a UNESCO’s statute B partner in theatre criticism has been around for a long time: this year it is celebrating 60 years. But the Thalia Prize is young – only ten years old. Since the prize was created, its laureates have been Eric Bentley (2006), Jean-Pierre Sarrazac (2008), Richard Schechner (2010), Kapila Vatsyayan (2012) and Eugenio Barba (2014).

Osofisan becomes the first African and indeed first black to ever win this highly contested award which is coming shortly after Professor Emmanuel Dandaura became the first Black and first African member of the executive committee of the international association of theatre Critics in 2014.

Femi Osofisan: A Brief Introduction
By Don Rubin

When asked about African theatre, most theatre critics and scholars would be hard-pressed to name more than one or two playwrights beyond the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka or the anti-apartheid activist Athol Fugard. Both made their reputations in the 1960s and 1970s.

The 2016 winner of the IATC’s prestigious Thalia Prize for contribution to theatre through critical writing, Femi Osofisan, is probably not a name that comes to mind that quickly. But hopefully – with the Thalia – that is about to change.

Osofisan is of the generation that followed those two theatrical giants and his footprint is almost as large as theirs on the continent of Africa and it is growing in other parts of the world as well. Probably his most well-known play is Once Upon Four Robbers, which is already taught in numerous universities around the world and has been widely anthologized. But it is only one of some 50 plays by this major artist and activist. These plays – like his critical writings – are cries for personal freedom and political action and include many adaptations of Greek and Shakespearean originals, tailored for whatever political situation might exist.

Like Soyinka and Fugard before him, Osofisan has attacked repressive governments wherever they have emerged and he has been attacked in turn. He has had his work staged at the Guthrie and other major regional theatres in the United States, as well as in Germany, the U.K., Sri Lanka, Canada and China. In 1982 he was appointed a member of the pioneer Editorial Board and think tank of The Guardian Newspaper (Lagos).

Canada is proud to have joined the Nigerian IATC Centre in proposing Osofisan for the Thalia. For the record, that joint proposal for Osofisan’s nomination reads as follows:

“The Nigerian Centre of the IATC in association with the Canadian Centre of the IATC propose for the 2016 Thalia Prize Prof. Femi Osofisan of Nigeria for his extraordinary career as critic, scholar, playwright and spokesman for artistic freedom in his native Nigeria and for his outspoken criticism of artistic repression across the African continent.

“The author of over 50 plays and hundreds of critical essays, four novels and five collections of poetry and the subject of several celebratory volumes in his honour, Prof. Osofisan has followed in the footsteps of Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka. His work has covered a range of subjects including, as eloquently stated in a volume of essays on his life and work published in 2009, the roles of theatre and literature in society, gender and empowerment of women, style and language, the mobility of oral tradition and even translation and transliteration.

“In that same volume, Osofisan is referred to as ‘Nigeria’s most purposeful writer and social critic cum activist. He has incessantly used his creativity to champion the cause of the marginalized members of society. Through his outstanding writing across many genres, Osofisan has led his generation of writers on the path of utilizing their writings as a mobilizing tool for social and political change…’

“In a lecture given at the University of Ibadan in 2006, Harvard Prof. Biodun Jeyifo called Osofisan ‘the most African playwright of the post-colonial era… the most prolific playwright on the African continent…’ Jeyifo went on to place Osofisan with Soyinka at the centre of the ‘radical and literary cultural movements of the past three decades.’

“Born in 1946, Prof. Osofisan entered the University of Ibadan in 1966 majoring in French (he studied for a year at the University of Dakar as part of his degree), graduating in 1969. He then won a scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris. He did not complete his graduate degree there, however, because his supervisor did not allow him to do a thesis on African drama. He eventually obtained his PhD at the University of Ibadan with a dissertation on the ‘Origins of Drama in West Africa in English and French.’

“A Professor and former Chair at the University of Ibadan (he is now a Professor Emeritus) and recognized as playwright, director and critic, in 1982 he was appointed member of the pioneer Editorial Board and think tank of The Guardian Newspaper (Lagos). Directing his own plays at Ibadan, at other African universities and in the U.K., the U.S. (University of Pennsylvania and the University of Iowa among others), Germany, Sri Lanka, and Canada, his plays (especially his Once Upon Four Robbers, The Chattering and the Song and his African adaptations of Greek and Elizabethan plays such as Antigone and Hamlet) began winning national and international awards.

“The founder of the NGO called CentreStage Africa (the Centre for the Study of Theatre and Alternative Genres of Expression in Africa) and Vice-President of the Pan African Writers’ Association, his plays began receiving international attention after a production of his 1997 play Many Colours Make the Thunder King was presented at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.

“A volume of Osofisan’s collected essays were published in 2001 under the title Insidious Treasons. Included were major essays by Osofisan on Drama as Insurrection, the Terror of Relevance in Contemporary Nigeria, the Frontiers of Terror in a Post-Colonial State, and the Challenges of Nigerian Drama on the Euro-American Stage.

“Chosen to be the keynote speaker at the International Federation of Theatre Research World Congress in South Africa in 2007, he was – incredibly – unable to obtain a visa and his paper had to be read on his behalf. That major paper, a truly extraordinary piece of committed theatre criticism entitled “Literary Theatre After the Generals: A Personal Itinerary,” was published shortly thereafter in Theatre Research International and is required reading for anyone interested in political theatre or African theatre.

“In 2006, a critical volume about his work was published in Germany in the prestigious Bayreuth University African Studies Series under the title, Portraits for an Eagle. The volume includes essays by British scholar Martin Banham, Harvard’s Biodun Jeyifo, Africanist James Gibbs, the University of Leeds’ Jane Plastow and South African scholar Yvette Hutchison, among others.

“In 2009, another series of essays on his work, Emerging Perspectives on Femi Osofisan, was published by Africa World Press in the United States.

“Since his retirement from the University of Ibadan, Prof. Osofisan has continued to write, guest-direct his own plays and teach at universities and professional theatres around the world including Canada, Germany and, most recently in China (Peking University).

“He recently wrote: ‘I am writing for multi-cultural audiences, both in Nigeria and when I work abroad. I am looking for a third way that is neither western nor African, neither white nor black, not multi-racial but a play that simply deals with many races.’

“The Nigerian and Canadian Centres put forward this nomination in the belief that Prof. Osofisan is immensely deserving of being the first recipient from Africa of the IATC’s Thalia Prize. He has led African theatre and drama through both his playwriting and his criticism, through his art, his journalism and his immense scholarship.

“He has changed the way many Africans now perceive their own theatre and culture and he has changed the way many people in other parts of the world now perceive Africa and African theatre. Words have been his weapon against tyrannies of all sorts. Bringing his name to the whole world through the Thalia is not only appropriate but also a fitting addition to the distinguished names who have preceded him.”

We welcome Femi Osofisan to the ranks of Thalia laureates.

Don Rubin, Former President, Canadian Centre of the IATC
-http://aict-iatc.org/

Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Penny Busetto and Rehana Rossouw have been announced as the three shortlisted authors for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature.

The Etisalat Prize for Literature is the first pan-African Prize that is open solely to debut fiction writers from African countries.

Now in its third year, it is acknowledged as the most prestigious literary prize for African fiction.

The three books, selected from the longlist of nine, are: Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Democratic Republic of Congo) – Tram 83 (Deep Vellum); Penny Busetto (South Africa) – The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself (Jacana Media) and Rehana Rossouw (South Africa) – What Will People Say? (Jacana Media).

The shortlist was selected by a three-member judging panel: Professor Ato Quayson, Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto (Chair of Judges); Molara Wood, writer, journalist, critic and editor; and Zukiswa Wanner, author of Men of the South and London Cape Town Joburg.

Chair of judges, Professor Ato Quayson, comments: “The variety of styles and subject matter of the books on this year’s Etisalat Prize for Literature shortlist reveal the vitality of contemporary African literature. They contribute to our understanding of what it is to love, to laugh, to improvise, sometimes to despair, to know and yet be fooled by the assurance of such knowledge, to work for our ablution in the fate of another’s suffering, and ultimately to embrace life in all its bewildering complexities.”

The shortlisted writers will be rewarded with a sponsored multi-city book tour and will also have 1,000 copies of their books purchased by Etisalat for distribution to schools, libraries and book clubs across the continent.

NoViolet Bulawayo won the maiden edition of the Etisalat Prize for Literature with her highly celebrated debut novel, We Need New Names, while Songeziwe Mahlangu emerged winner of the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature competition with his novel, Penumbra.

The winner of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature will be announced in March and will receive £15,000, an engraved Montblanc Meisterstück pen. The Prize also includes an Etisalat sponsored fellowship at the University of East Anglia, mentored by Professor Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland.

Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Penny Busetto and Rehana Rossouw have been announced as the three shortlisted authors for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature.

The Etisalat Prize for Literature is the first pan-African Prize that is open solely to debut fiction writers from African countries. Now in its third year, it is acknowledged as the most prestigious literary prize for African fiction.

The shortlist was selected by a three-member judging panel: Professor Ato Quayson, Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto (Chair of Judges); Molara Wood, writer, journalist, critic and editor; and Zukiswa Wanner, author of Men of the South and London Cape Town Joburg.

According to the chair of judges, Professor Ato Quayson: “The variety of styles and subject matter of the books on this year’s Etisalat Prize for Literature shortlist reveal the vitality of contemporary African literature. They contribute to our understanding of what it is to love, to laugh, to improvise, sometimes to despair, to know and yet be fooled by the assurance of such knowledge, to work for our ablution in the fate of another’s suffering, and ultimately to embrace life in all its bewildering complexities.”

The shortlisted writers will be rewarded with a sponsored multi-city book tour and will also have 1,000 copies of their books purchased by Etisalat for distribution to schools, libraries and book clubs across the Continent.

Fiston Mwanza Mujila

NoViolet Bulawayo won the maiden edition of the Etisalat Prize for Literature with her highly celebrated debut novel, We Need New Names, while Songeziwe Mahlangu emerged winner of the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature competition with his novel, Penumbra.

The winner of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature will be announced in March and will receive £15,000, an engraved Montblanc Meisterstück pen. The Prize also includes an Etisalat sponsored fellowship at the University of East Anglia, mentored by Professor Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland.

]]>My new book is the nastiest and will draw blood, says Soyinkahttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/10/25/my-new-book-is-the-nastiest-and-will-draw-blood-says-soyinka/
Sun, 25 Oct 2015 18:44:13 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=259158Funsho Arogundade/Abeokuta

Prof Wole Soyinka

Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has said that his new book, “InterInventions: Between Defective Memory and Public Lie: A Personal Odyssey in The Republic of Liars” is one of the nastiest books he has ever written and is meant to draw blood.

Soyinka disclosed this on Saturday inside Cultural Centre, Kuto, Abeokuta, Ogun State while speaking at the formal inauguration of The Wole Soyinka Foundation.

The foremost playwright revealed that the new book is about his vengeance against public lies peddled by some certain individuals against his person. The lies, he said, were made worse by the internet and some online publications.

“This is not one of the butterfly books. No, it is not a butterfly book. It is meant to draw blood. I am warning all of you. It is so truthful and hurts. It is the nastiest book i’ve written. It is my vengeance against public lies,” the Nobel laureate told the distinguished audience.

Soyinka and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo have taken swipes at each other over the latter’s assessment of him in his book titled ‘My Watch’.

After the release of the former leader’s controversial book where he had made some claims against the playwright, Soyinka, at some fora, had described Obasanjo as a “liar”.

Also in May, angry Soyinka had lashed out at various online portals, describing them as “internet infestations”, for crediting an attribution to him where he was said to have described the Igbos as “greedy” group while delivering a lecture at the Hutchins Centre, Harvard University, United States.

“Anyone who believes what I am alleged to have said must be a moron,” livid Soyinka had stated in a terse statement in reaction to the then widely circulated claims.

These two annoying scenarios, Soyinka said, had spurred him to put his response in the new 130–page literary work.

The book, he opined, is more of a curative as he advised that if anyone feels vengeful, they should read the book and will definitely be alright.

“The book is purgatory and it is like a homeopathic medicine,” said the literary giant.

Speaking on the foundation’s premium project of artists’ retreat haven, Soyinka said all artists deserve a place where they can go and hide to preserve their sanity.

He disclosed that he would have gone clinically insane at a time if he hadn’t found a place to go and hide to create. Thus the foundation will be offering a residential fellowship for the young artists, a place where they can reflect, research and deplore their creativity.

Also in his remark, the host governor, Ibikunle Amosun, expressed excitement at the formal inauguration of the foundation which he described as long overdue.

The governor said the state is ever proud to have a great icon like Soyinka, and as a citizen of the state, Nigeria and the world at large, he deserves to be celebrated.

He announced his administration’s readiness to support the foundation and called on its board and trustee members to intimate the state government on how they can participate in the running of the foundation so that it can achieve its set aims.

In his contribution during the launching of the foundation, His Royal Majesty, the Alake of Egbaland and Vice Chairman of the foundation, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, also expressed his commitment towards the success of the foundation.

He then said every donor to the initiative should be assured that they are investing wisely.

The Wole Soyinka Foundation will bring writers, artists, scholars, researchers and other creative thinkers together in “an optimally conducive environment for reflection and creativity.”

Its junior and senior fellows will spend some time in the residence at a time during which they would be free of all constraints.

At the inauguration, Ifedapo Akinola was announced as the first junior resident while Prof. Obiageli Okigbo also makes history as first senior resident of the Wole Soyinka Foundation.

The inauguration attracted top government officials, literary icons, and academics.

Aside Edo State governor, Adams Oshiohmole who presented copies of the new book to the public, the event also had in attendance former governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti) and Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers) both ministers-designate; Donald Duke, former Cross River State governor; Professors J.P. Clark and Kole Omotosho and Wale Okediran.

Others are Dr. Doyin Abiola, Yemisi Ransome-Kuti, Mrs. Lola Akande, Lagos State commissioner for women affairs and poverty alleviation; Kehinde Bamigbetan, Special Adviser to Lagos State governor on community and communication and Mrs. Jumoke Okoya Thomas among others.

While some clips of the much anticipated “Ake”, the biopic on Prof. Soyinka produced by Dapo Adeniyi was screened at the inauguration, there were poetry recitation by Akeem Lasisi, Jumoke Verissimo, Wana Udobang and Igoni Barrett.

Also, Mr. Kunle Ajibade, executive editor, TheNews/PMNEWS read an excerpts from one of Soyinka’s book, while famed writer and author Odia Ofeimun presented to the guest of honour, Soyinka, a gift of framed picture.

The highlight of the event was the performance of dance drama by the 18-member teen group, ‘The Footprints of David Group’.

The kids from the Footprints School, Gbagada, Lagos wowed the audience with their well-choreographed dance and traditional songs.

]]>In Pursuit Of Public Goodhttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/08/19/in-pursuit-of-public-good/
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:08:40 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=250584Dr Wumi Raji’s review of The Great Leap and In Bold Prints edited by Hakeem Bello presented during the public presentation of the two books at the Shell Recital Hall, MUSON Centre, Lagos, on Tuesday, August 18, 2015.

All Protocols observed.

In Pursuit of Public Good, the words which I have adopted as the title of this review come from page 26 of The Great Leap: Speeches by Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), one of the two books being presented to the public today. It was the last page of a speech titled “How it Came to Be”, constituting the only one in the first part of the book, and which the governor had originally presented to the MBA students of the Lagos Business School, Pan Atlantic University, Ajah, on February 10, 2011.

In the speech, Babatunde Fashola gives an account of how he found himself running as the gubernatorial candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) much against his own expectation, and how he went about preparing himself for the responsibility of the office after having agreed to take up the challenge.

Fashola winds up that speech with words of admonition for his listeners: “My advice to those of you who take public office or seek to do so,” he says, “is that the best way to seize that opportunity is to prepare for it and plan to use it for only one purpose – the public good.”
In the introduction to The Great Leap, Hakeem Bello describes Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) as belonging, arguably, among the most successful individuals to have held the governorship position in Lagos State.

Interestingly, he got into the office by chance – and this has earlier been indicated. Following his call to the Bar in 1999, he had deliberately shunned public service, preferring instead to pursue a career in private legal practice.

In 2002, he was summoned by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the then governor of Lagos State and asked to take up the position of Chief of Staff, following the resignation of Alhaji Lai Mohammed who hitherto had served in that capacity. He continued with the job when Tinubu was re-elected for a second term in 2003, and was preparing to return to his law practice four years later when again Tinubu decided to throw his weight behind him as the ACN governorship candidate for Lagos State.
Fashola made sure he prepared himself well for the responsibility attached to the position of the governor of Lagos State once he accepted his nomination.

He took a copy each of the manifesto of the party, the document spelling out the ten-point agenda of the government of Lagos State, and the charter of Millenium Development Goals, and, having studied them closely, designed a roadmap titled “My Contract with Lagosians”; undertook a tour of all local governments in the state to obtain first hand information on the areas of need in each of them; read books on leadership and transformations of city-states, travelled to New York, Singapore, Dubai and such other places that he felt represented models of development to see for himself how things work; and constituted a team of advisers comprised of serving public officers, technocrats and experienced politicians together with whom he held meetings on a regular basis. Here, problems were defined, goals articulated and methods of implementation deliberated upon.

Fashola started running immediately after he was sworn in on May 29, 2007. Today, having completed two terms of four years each, he has arguably become of the best known political figures in Nigeria. Fashola took on the governorship position with a great sense of mission, and has recorded changes in many areas of life in Lagos State. The areas he has touched include infrastructural development, education, health, security, housing, transportation, employment creation and environmental design. The two books being presented today serve more or less as a record of some of his legacies.

In Bold Print: Thoughts of Babatunde Raji Fashola is a small pocket book representing a compendium of quotes extrapolated mostly from the over one thousand speeches delivered by Fashola during his eight year tenure as governor of Lagos State. The Great Leap on the other hand is a careful selection of forty of the speeches grouped into ten uneven parts. The smaller book presents Fashola as a man of vision and ideas, and an inspiring leader. The thoughts documented in it cover a vast gamut of fields including leadership, ethics, the plight of the people of the African continent, governance, education and globalization.

Some of them clarify the basis of some of Fashola actions while in office. The concern may be why he had to give account to the people every one hundred days as he did throughout the eight years he spent in Alausa as can be seen in the very first quote in the compendium; why, much against what has become standard practice by public officers in Nigeria, he decided to totally jettison the use of siren; or, as a last example, why he kept on agitating for state police throughout his eight year period of tenure as governor. Hear Fashola’s stirring words to the children of Lagos State in the following quote:

We are here today because we realize the significance of our childhood in determining the kind of adults we become. This is why we take each one of you, our precious children, very seriously. Inside each of you lie the seeds of greatness waiting to be discovered and nurtured; an inexhaustible mine of infinite potentials waiting to be excavated and deployed for the benefit of humanity.

Listen also to his perspective on education in another one:
In the 21st century, education will remain the most valuable currency that every nation will desire but which no Central Bank can print. Every nation must decide for herself how much of this currency she requires and set about how to acquire it
And in this last example, I challenge you, dear guests, to answer the question Fashola has posed on the desirability or otherwise of family planning?

Can a family with one bedroom (apartment) rise out of poverty if they make six children live in that one room, only on the basis of hope that life will get better?

Clearly, every single quote in In Bold Print provokes thought, destabilizes what otherwise are considered as settled positions or seeks to make the reader jump up and break into a run. It presents Fashola as a thinker and the compiler and editor as a loyal, attentive and thoughtful aide.

The Great Leap being the bigger of the two volumes presents the governor in action. In it, the man, Fashola is seen at work. The two speeches in part two are the addresses he presented during his inauguration for the first and second terms respectively. Parts three and four together have close to half of the total number of speeches published in the book. Rightly so because it is where the talks he gave while actualizing his plans of governance are concentrated. Part three specifically is sub-titled “Setting Agenda” and has as number one the address which provides the title for the book.

“Setting Agenda for Credible Governance”, the speech the governor presented at a Nigerian Union of Journalists lecture makes it clear that Fashola conceives governance as a social contract whereby citizens elevate a select group of people to a higher pedestal, investing in them certain powers and responsibility in expectation that those so elevated will devote themselves to the achievement of public good, which “good” will include security guarantee, education, infrastructural development, health care delivery, electricity and more. As Fashola says, “where the government consistently fails to perform its constitutional obligations, the people become dissatisfied and this creates credibility problems for the government.”

An awareness of the need to retain people’s trusts seems to be what drove Fashola throughout his tenure, as evident in the rest of the speeches in the section: The speeches are either given while working with stakeholders on taxation, brainstorming on how to check incidences of collapsing buildings, agitating for state police, inaugurating Lagos State Education Summit, or while launching security trust fund or delivering public health lecture.

The focus of the speeches in part four overlaps with that of the ones in part three as already implied, the slight difference being just that while the former deal more with addresses delivered while projects are just being initiated, section four on the other hand concentrate on those presented while they have been completed and are either being commissioned or delivered.

They include ones given at the launching of the Lagos Housing Mortgage programme, the investment forum for the Lagos Rail Mass Transit, the commissioning of Awolowo Museum at Lekki and the handing over of the Lekki Ikoyi Bridge. The speech titled “Corporate Social Responsibility” and published on pages 138-140 of the book deserves special mention in my view. The address was presented during the commissioning of the 1.3 kilometer Ajose Adeogun dual carriageway, the rehabilitation of which was undertaken by Zenith Bank. As Fashola says during the concessioning, the project underscores the great benefit derivable from public-private partnership.

Through The Great Leap, Hakeem Bello has cleverly documented for posterity the vision that animated his boss’ actions and activities and the project he executed while serving as governor of Lagos State. Primarily, and as the speeches in part seven of the book make clear, Fashola wanted to turn Lagos into a mega city.

It is this vision of Lagos as a huge urban agglomeration with functioning facilities that explains the infrastructural projects the former governor delivered while in power, the roads he constructed, the light rail project that he initiated, the beautification programme that he launched and the hugely ambitious Eko Atlantic City project he started. The ideology that powered Fashola vision is no doubt neo-liberal and this is evident in the kind of books he read while preparing to take office and, as well, the cities he visited.
Since neo-liberalism itself projects profound contradictions, it may then become clear the reason while Fashola has sometimes found himself at the receiving end of public criticism. There, specifically, has been a clash of metaphors in the papers in recent times, as readers were treated to the propriety or otherwise of fighting or wrestling with pigs. What is important here is not the motive behind the attack or the details of the allegations.

Fortunately, and going by the evidence in some of the quotes in In Bold Prints, Fashola is himself aware that decisions taken by those in government can affect people either positively or negatively, and that leaders themselves are far from being perfect, that they sometimes make mistakes. Since it is not unlikely that he finds himself holding public office yet again soon, Fashola may wish to give a thought to the fact that advanced neo liberal economies of the world have ways of cushioning the harsh effects certain policies exert on ordinary people.

There are, for example, living allowances for unemployed people, material support for the old and infirm, grants or loans for students who cannot afford tuition fees or sustenance allowance, generous subsidies for health care and massive investments in public transportation.

But saying this is not to take anything away from Fashola’s achievements while in office as governor of Lagos State: the bold steps he took, the sense of mission and commitment he demonstrated and the courage with which he took on challenges.

The Great Leap and In Bold Print represent veritable testimonies to all this. They are both well-edited and beautifully produced. Both indeed are books that those currently holding, or aspiring to hold, public positions need to procure and read. I salute Hakeem Bello for having the presence of mind to put them together and congratulate Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) whose vision and accomplishments the books preserve for posterity. Eko o ni baje o.

Dr Raji is of the Department of Dramatic Arts,Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State

Globacom stated on Thursday that Prof. Soyinka and some of Nigeria’s upcoming literary writers will be honoured in an event entitled “A Night with Wole Soyinka and Nigeria’s Young Literary Stars” in August in Lagos.

The event, according to the company, is one of the numerous efforts initiated to appreciate the literary stars for their outstanding contributions to the study of literature which has put Nigeria on the world literary stage.

Globacom stated that the Nobel Laureate had made Nigeria and Africa proud, adding that the celebration of the intellectual jewel at the event will also provide opportunity for the media, literature lovers and guests to interact with Professor Soyinka and the young award winning writers.

The telecoms company explained that it is working towards showcasing an evening of glitz, glamour, endless entertainment and Intellectual simulation for guests.

In addition, a documentary on the life and times of Professor Soyinka will be showcased as well as a reading of his works by the three young Nigerian writers.

During the event, Globacom will also launch a special prize in Literature for undergraduate students across the country tagged “The Glo Literature Prize for Undergraduate Students”.

It will also feature an interactive exchange between the Nobel Laureate and the young writers being honoured on the night, Sefi Atta, Tope Folarin and E.C. Osondu who will share their personal perspective on African literature and the contributions of Prof Soyinka.

Born in 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria, Sefi Atta has won several awards including the 2003 Red Hen Press Short Story Award, 2005 PEN International David TK Wong Prize, 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa amongst others.

Washington, DC., United States based Tope Folarin is a recipient of writing fellowships from the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC., and serves on the board of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

Tope was educated at Morehouse College, and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Master’s degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. In 2013, he won the Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for his short story entitled ‘Miracle’ from Transition.

E.C. Osondu, the last celebrant, lives in Rhode Island, USA where he is an Assistant Professor of English at Providence College. He won the Caine Prize in 2009 for his story “Waiting”. He has also won the Allen and Nirelle Galso Prize for Fiction, and his story, “A Letter from Home”, was judged one of The Top Ten Stories on the Internet in 2006.

Osondu’s debut short story collection Voice of America was published by Harper Collins in 2010 and Granta Books in 2011.

Former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Segun Osoba, has described former President, Olusegun Obasanjo as big liar and an untruthful chronicler of history.

He made the remarks in Lagos, western Nigeria, while responding to the claims in Obasanjo’s controversial book My Watch.

Speaking at the launch of Watch The Watcher, A Book of Remembrance of the Obasanjo Years, written by Yinka Odumakin, at the Sheraton Hotelon Monday in Lagos, Osoba said he would write his own account to debunk the lies Obasanjo has written in My Watch on how the Alliance for Democracy, AD, lost Ogun State in 2003.

According to Osoba, in 2002 during the University of Lagos Convocation, Obasanjo asked him and other AD governors who were at the convocation to meet him at Dodan Barracks.

“When we got there, he begged us to support him in 2003 to retain his seat as President in the 2003 election. But we told him it was not a decision we could take without the involvement of elders of the party such as Abraham Adesanya.

“So, another meeting was fixed for Ogun Government Lodge in Abeokuta. At the meeting, Obasanjo begged for our support again.

“However, two weeks before the 2003 presidential election, Abraham Adesanya accused Obasanjo of trying to use military tactics to outwit us. He failed to keep to the terms of the agreement we had with him.

“I am surprised that Obasanjo in his book denied knowing nothing about the arrangement between AD and his party,Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. I will give a full account of what happened in my book,” Osoba said.

Also speaking at the event, Ayo Adebanjo lambasted Obasanjo, saying he is a man that has no conscience, a self-centred man who believes no other person matters except himself.

Obasanjo’s book, My Watch, has continued to generate reactions since it was launched, with Nigerians such as Pro. Wole Soyinka and Brig-Gen Alabi-Isama, who were maligned in the book, describing Obasanjo as a compulsive liar.

]]>http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/29/osoba-lambasts-obasanjo/feed/4Obasanjo, An Irredeemable Hypocrite —Wole Soyinkahttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/24/obasanjo-an-irredeemable-hypocrite/
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/24/obasanjo-an-irredeemable-hypocrite/#commentsWed, 24 Dec 2014 11:51:14 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=223832Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has described former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, as an irredeemable hypocrite and a liar who takes delight in denigrating people.

Soyinka, in his reply to the attack on him by Obasanjo in his latest controversial book, My Watch, pillories Obasanjo for invoking God all the time and wonders whether Obasanjo actually believes in such an entity, given his recourse to lying compulsively.

“Our Owu retiree soldier and prolific author is an infliction that those of us who share the same era and nation space must learn to endure,” Soyinka writes.

Obasanjo has a “capacity for infantile mischief.”

Soyinka describes him as “master of mendacity,” writer of ‘ignoble fabrication’ and an “indefatigable peddler of lies.”

“I despise humanity whose stock-in-trade is to concoct lies simply to score a point, win an argument, puff up his or her own ego, denigrate or attempt to destroy a fellow being. However, even within such deplorable species, a special pit of universal opprobrium is reserved for those who even lack the courage of their own lies, but must foist them on others.” The high-point of Soyinka’s diatribe is a succinct comparison of Obasanjo toOlowo-aiye, a character in D.O. Fagunwa’s novel.

Prof Wole Soyinka at the press briefing. Photo: Idowu Ogunleye

Soyinka says he has been brief and mild because of the interventions of some mutual friends and this traditional season of goodwill.

“I had fully attuned myself to the fact that our Owu retiree soldier and prolific author is an infliction that those of us who share the same era and nation space must learn to endure. However, it does appear that there is no end to this individual’s capacity for infantile mischief, and for needless, mind-boggling provocations, such as his recent ‘literary’ intrusion on my peace.

Perhaps I ought to interrupt myself here with an apology to some mutual acquaintances – ‘blessed peacemakers’ and all – especially in this season of ‘peace and goodwill to all men’. Please know that your efforts have not been entirely in vain. I had a cordial exchange with Obasanjo over the phone recently – engineered by himself, his ground staff and/or a chance visitor– when I had cause to visit his Presidential Laundromat for the first time ever.During that exchange, I complimented him on making some quite positive use of landed property that was acquired under morally dubious circumstances, and blatantly developed through a process that I denounced as ‘executive extortionism’. That obscene proceeding has certainly set a competitive precedent for impunity in President Jonathan’s recent fund-raising shindig, editorialized in THE PUNCH (Dec. 23, 2014) as“Impunity Taken too Far”. So much for the latest from that direction – we mustn’t allow Handing-Over notes between presidents to distract us for too long.

To return to our main man, and friendly interventionists, you may like to note that I went so far as to engage him in light banter, stating that some of his lesser sins would be forgiven him for that creative conversion of the landscape – a conversation that he shortly afterwards delightedly shared with at least three mutual acquaintances. I promised a follow-up visit to view some mysterious rock script whose existence, he informed me, was uncovered by workers during ground clearing. The exchange was, in short, as good as ‘malice towards none’ that any polemicist could hope to contribute to the ongoing season of peace and goodwill. Obviously that visit will not now take place, any more than the pursuit of vague notions of some creative collaboration with his Centre that began to play around my mind.

That much I do owe you from my report card.Perhaps you will now accept that there are individuals who are born incorrigible but, more importantly, that some issues transcend one’s personal preferences for harmonious human relationships even in a season of traditional good will. The change in weather conditions sits quite well with me, however,since we are both acquainted with the Yoruba proverb that goes:the child that swears his mother will not sleep must also prepare for a prolonged, sleepless infancy.So let it be with Okikiola, the overgrown child of circumstance.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo

One of the incessant ironies that leapt up at me as I read Obasanjo’s magnum opus was that we are both victims of a number of distasteful impositions– such as being compelled again and again to seek justice against libel in the law courts. I felt genuine empathy to read that he still has a pending thirty-year case instituted by him against his alleged libelers! Judgment was delivered in my favour regarding one of the most nauseating only this year, after surviving technical and other procrastinations, defendant evasions and other legalistic impediments for nearly as long as his. That leaves only a veritable Methuselah on the court list still awaiting re-listing under the resurrection ritual language known as de novo.Unfortunately, not all acts of defamation or wilful misrepresentation are actionable, otherwise, my personal list against this newly revealed fellow-sufferer would have counted for an independent volume of the Nigerian Law Report since our paths first crossed during the Civil War.My commitment to the belief in the fundamental right of all human beings NOT TO BE LIED AGAINST remains a life obsession, and thus demands, at the very least, an obligation of non-commission among fellow victims.

I must, therefore, reserve a full, frontal dissection of Obasanjo’sMy Watch for later, most especially since the work itself is currently under legal restraint and is not readily accessible to a general readership. So, for now, let me single out just one of the most glaring instances of this man’s compulsive career of lying, one sample that the media can readily check upon and use as a touchstone – if they do need one – in assessing our author’s multifaceted claims and commentaries on people and events. I refer here to the grotesque and personally insulting statement that he has attributed to me for some inscrutable but obviously diversionary reasons. In the process, this past Master of Mendacity brazenly implicates an innocent young man, Akin Osuntokun, who once served him as a Special Adviser. Instead of conferring dignity on a direct rebuttal of an ignoble fabrication, I shall simply make a personal, all-embracing attestation:

I despise that species of humanity whose stock-in-trade is to concoct lies simply to score a point, win an argument, puff up his or her own ego, denigrate or attempt to destroy a fellow being. However, even within such deplorable species, a special pit of universal opprobrium is surely reserved for those who even lack the courage of their own lies, but must foist them on others. When an old man stuffs a lie into the throat of an age-mate of his own children – omo inu e! – we can only pity an irredeemable egomaniac whose dotage is headed for twilight disgrace.

D.O. Fagunwa, the pioneer Yoruba novelist, was a compulsive moralist. I suspect that he may have exerted some influence on our garrulous general, resulting in his pupil’s tedious, misapplied and self-serving deluge of moralizing. It seems quite likely indeed that the ghostly, moralistic hand of Fagunwa reached out from the Great Beyond, sat his would-be competitor forcefully before a mirror and bade him write what he saw in that image. I invoke Fagunwa because, at his commemorative colloquium in Akure in August last year, I drew my audience’s attention to a remarkable passage in Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare. The passage had struck me during translation and stuck to my mind. I found it uncanny that the original creative moralist, Fagunwa, had captured the psychological profile of a being whom I have been compelled by circumstances to study as an eerie creation, yet this was a character Fagunwa was unlikely to have encountered in real life at the time that he produced that work.

The section comes from an account of a visit to the abode of Iku, Death, the terrifying host to Olowo-aiye, the narrative voice of the adventure.Iku, the host, had been admonishing his guests through the histories of seven creatures who were not permitted a straightforward passage to Heaven or Hell, but were subjected to admonitory punishment at the halfway house to the abode of the dead. The most horrendous tortures were reserved, it would seem, for the last of the seven such ‘detainees’, and I invited my audience to ponder if they could identify any prominent individual, a public figure whose life conduct seamlessly fitted into Fagunwa’s portrayal, which went thus:

“The seventh…. is not among those who set out to improve the world but rather to cause distress to its inhabitants. It was through manipulations that he attained a high position. Having achieved this, however, he constantly blocked the progress of those behind him, this being a most deplorable act in the eyes of God, and rank behaviour in the judgment of the dwellers of heaven – that anyone who has enjoyed upliftment in life should seek to be an obstacle for those who follow him. This man forgot the beings of earth, forgot the beings of heaven, in turn, he forgot the presence of God. The worst kind of behaviour agitated his hands – greed occupied the centre of his heart, and he was a creature that walked in darkness. This man wallowed in bribery, he was chairman of the circle of scheming, head of the gang of double-dealing, field-marshal of those who crept about in the dark of night. With his mouth, he ruined the work of others, while he used a big potsherd to cover the good works of some, that others might not see their attainments. He nosed around for secrets that would entrap his companions, and blew them up into monumental crimes in the eyes of the world. He who turns the world upside down, places the deceitful on the throne, casts the truthful down – because such is a being of base earth, he will never stand as equal among the uplifted.”

My co-occupants of the High Table, in side remarks, and those who came up from the audience afterwards to volunteer their answer to the riddle, without exception named one individual and one individual only, even as I remained non-committal. Indeed, one or two tried to put up a defence of that nominee, and I had to remind them that I had named no one! Fagunwa wrote largely of the world of mongrelized creatures but, as I remarked, his fiction remains a prescient and cautionary mirror of the society we inhabit, where beasts of the forest appear to have a greater moral integrity than those who claim to be leading lights of society.

In this season of goodwill, we owe a duty to our immediate and distant neighbours: CAVEAT EMPTOR!Let all beware, who try to buy a Rolex from this indefatigable watch peddler. His own hand-crafted, uniquely personalized timepiece has been temporarily confiscated by NDLEA and other guardians of public health but, there is no cause for despair. Such has been the fate of the misunderstood and the envied, avatars descended from the heavens before their time, the seers, and all who crave recognition. Our author invokes God tirelessly, without provocation, without necessity and without justification, perhaps preemptively, but does he really believe in such an entity? Does our home-bred Double-O-Seven believe in anything outside his own Omnipotency? Could he possibly have mistaken the Christian exhortation – ‘Watch and Pray’ for his private inclination to “Watch and Prey? This is a seasoned predator on others’ achievements – he preys on their names, their characters, their motivations, their true lives, preys on gossip and preys on facts, preys on contributions to collective undertakings…..even preys on their identities, substituting his own where possible. Well, hopefully he may actually believe in the inevitable End to all vanities? So, let our Great Immortal, the Unparalleled Achiever, Divinely appointed Watchman even on the world that is yet to come remember Fagunwa’sIku, the ultimate predator whose visitation comes to us all, sooner or later.

Chei! There is Death o!”

]]>http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/24/obasanjo-an-irredeemable-hypocrite/feed/5Pirates Feast On Obasanjo’s Bookhttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/22/pirates-feast-on-obasanjos-book/
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/22/pirates-feast-on-obasanjos-book/#commentsMon, 22 Dec 2014 12:57:55 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=223652Pirated copies of ‘My Watch,’ a controversial autobiography written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo have flooded the streets of Lagos, selling for as low as N7,000.

The illegal duplication of the book is coming on the heels of an order by a Federal Capital Territory High Court judge, Justice Valentine Ashi, asking security agents, including the police and men of the Department of State Service, to confiscate all copies of the book found anywhere in the country.

The original book has three volumes and costs about N25,000 but the pirated copy, which has two volumes, costs less than half the price and comes in a white cover as opposed to the original’s yellow and brown colour.

Some hawkers of the book found in Maryland and Opebi areas of Lagos said theywere selling the pirated copies due to the high demand of the scarce book by members of the public.

The book: My Watch

Investigations revealed that the book became scarce when the court ordered its seizure because the author allegedly flouted its order to stop publication.

“This is our opportunity to make money,” a hawker at Opebi who did not disclose where he got the book, stated.

“My friend, you know this book is illegal now and we are even taking a huge risk selling it. The controversy in the pages of the book and the controversy that it has continued to generate in society have made it a bestseller.

“I usually sell it for between N11,000 and N7,000 depending on the negotiating power of the customer.”

The book centres on the life of Obasanjo in the military, as a democratic president and after office.

It became controversial after its publication when Buruji Kashamu, Chairman, Organisation and Mobilisation Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party in the southwest, went to court to stop the launch of the book by Obasanjo.

Despite the court’s order stopping the launch, Obasanjo on 9 December, 2014, presented the book to the public and the judge ordered that the book be confiscated.

]]>http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/22/pirates-feast-on-obasanjos-book/feed/2Fashola To Launch Sodade’s Bookhttp://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/18/fashola-to-launch-sodades-book/
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/18/fashola-to-launch-sodades-book/#commentsThu, 18 Dec 2014 12:35:31 +0000http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/?p=223287Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola is expected to grace the book presentation of the Permanent Secretary of the Lagos State Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Bayo Sodade, on Friday, 19 December.

Bayo Sodade’s books, “Financial Control in the Nigerian Public Service, (2nd Edition)” and “Biblenomics: Before Adam Smith, There Was..” will be unveiled at the Event Centre, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos with Governor Fashola as the Special Guest of Honour.

Other dignitaries billed to attend the event in various capacities are the Lagos State Deputy Governor, Princess Adejoke Adefulire-Chairman of the Occasion; Chief Bayo Osibo-Chief presenter; Senator Gbenga Ashafa, Chief E.O.C. Eludoyin, Chief Pius Akinyelure and Bukola Adeniji-Co-presenters; Oba Rilwan Akiolu and Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, the Oba of Lagos and Alake of Egbaland respectively-Royal Fathers of the Day; Rt. Dr. Olusola Odedeji, the Lord Bishop of the Diocese of Lagos West, Anglican Communion-Spiritual Father of the Day and Pastor Ben Akabueze, the Lagos State Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget-Chief Host.

Sodade dedicates “Financial Control in the Nigerian Public Service, (2nd Edition)”, a sequel to the first publication by him in 2006, to Fashola for “daring to fan the ember of hope.”

The author brings to fore his vast experience garnered over time in the public sector, giving insights into the elements of public finance management in Nigeria and taking into cognisance the new reforms, laws and regulations in existence, while also explicitly documenting the changes effected on the rules guiding public financial management, procurement, auditing and accountability.

He exhibits his high level of brilliance in the comprehensive analysis of the New Pension Reform, payment procedures in government, auditing and accountability in public service; Due Process, NEEDS and Annual Appropriation procedures; while also making submissions on financial independence for public servants.

The reviewers are Mr. David Sunmoni, the Permanent Secretary and Accountant-General of the Lagos State Treasury Office and Dr. Dimeji Alo, the Chairman of Berger Paints.

In a telephone conversation with P.M.NEWS and TheNEWS,Alabi-Isama described Obasanjo as an incredible liar and said that if he had read Obasanjo’s book before it was presented in Lagos last Tuesday,9 December, he would have gone to the venue to challenge Obasanjo.

He said “the tragedy of our civil war is painful, but that Obasanjo is publishing fiction about it is so outrageous. We should not allow this liar to get away with his self-serving lies.’’

Here is the text of Alabi-Isama’s response:

•Alabi-Isama

“I’m gravely pained to be trading words with General Olusegun Obasanjo once again on the history of Nigeria-Biafra War. He is an elder and a former ruler who, ordinarily, should be treated with utmost respect. But how can one genuinely respect an old man who tells lies like a badly raised child? Obasanjo has obviously not recovered from the shock inflicted on him by my book, The Tragedy of Victory in which I exposed the tissues of lies in his civil war memoir, My Command. It is said that a lie may travel for a thousand miles, but it takes just one step of truth to catch up with it.

“I’m alive to stand up to him on the lies he has told on the war because I was a major participant in it.I kept records.With facts and figures at my finger tips, I have debunked Obasanjo’s lies in part three of my book, consisting of one hundred and sixty five pages, sixty nine pictures, thirteen military strategies and tactics, maps and documents. This was the same Obasanjo who published a fake Federal Government gazette that I was found guilty by the Army when I was never tried.I have proved that Obasanjo was an incompetent commander. I have proved that he was a wily and cunning fellow, and an incredible opportunist who reaped where he did not sow.

“I have proved that he was an ingrate and a hypocrite. More importantly, I have proved that he was a coward, who ran away from the war front to go and look for phantom ammunition.Rather than respond to my claims the way a gallant officer should, he has now responded like a motor-park tout, impugning my person and questioning my ethnic lineage. I never said I was from Ibadan. I only schooled there.General Obasanjo, thisbolekaja style is so demeaning.You live in a glass house, so stop throwing stones. We, who have facts, pictures and documents, meticulously kept over the years, can tell the whole world one or two things about you.

L-R: Alabi-Isama, mother of bride groom, Obasanjo and his bride, Remi

“Have a look at this attached picture at your wedding to your first wife Remi. When the photographer wanted to take the picture of the bride and groom and their parents, you said a few things about your parents which I still remember.It was only Remi’s mother that took the picture with us. Please, don’t mess with the memory of my dear parents. You know my mother, an Ilorin woman, and you also saw her at the war front. She told me who my father was and she spoke his language, and took me to his home town when he died. I went to primary school in Owu,so I know your family very well.You should be honest enough to tell the world the story of the man who was your father.I told you and wrote in my book that any person who does not appreciate the efforts of women has had no good mother. Please, don’t go beyond military tactics and strategies when dealing with me.

“You say in volume three of your book My Watch that I could be in bed with a woman while radioing my commander that I was in pursuit of rebels. Hundreds of thousands of those who have read my book The Tragedy of Victory——a six hundred and seventy-page book, complete with four hundred and fifty pictures and thirty nine military strategies and tactics, maps and documents—- will call you a liar. I am so surprised and even embarrassed that a man of your status is still trading in gutter rumours. An elder with a filthy mind, a leader who lacks wisdom of age, does not deserve any respect.

“I’m the same GodwinAlabi-Isama that commanded the troops that liberated today’s Cross River State in thirty days of battle from Calabar to Obubra with no single casualty.This is the same Alabi-Isama that advanced 480 kilometres in 30 days from Calabar to Port Harcourt, liberating today’s Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa States with 35,000 men and women with 15000 on logistics, building roads and pontoons, with 8 men and 2 officers as my casualties. Obasanjo ordered the attack of Ohoba, a mere 24 miles from Owerri, in one hour of battle, more than 1000 Nigerian soldiers were dead.

Obasanjo unveiling the book

“Obasanjo claims that when I once played squash with him, I cheated. This incredible liar has forgotten that there were witnesses to that game. Those witnesses are still alive, and they remember what really happened.I played squash with him once in my life. He could not make a point because I was not one of his sycophants who would allow him to win a game just to massage his huge ego.Look, General Obasanjo, there was no way you could have beaten me in any game. You do not have the physique and agility to do that. Apart from being a popular sports man and soccer captain in Ibadan Boys High School,I was Sports Officer in the Nigerian Army, playing games from soccer to tennis, athletics etc. You never played any games at school let alone in the Army. If you had been diligent at your physical exercises as we were taught to be, your protruding tummy would not have become a butt of joke to many officers and men of the Army.

“General Obasanjo may try but he cannot deny the evidence of the civil war tragic history. While he got over a thousand soldiers killed at Ohoba, myself,Alani Akinrinade,and the brilliant and hardworking Pincer Team of Ola Oni, Iluyomade, Isemede, S.S. Tomoye, Salawu, Okwarobo, Sunny Tuoyo, etc.did a better job at the Third Marine Commando.I have stated how it was done in The Tragedy of Victory, by writing to set the Civil War records straight.Obasanjo says I only wanted to make money that was why I wrote my book, after all I was broke. I thank Obasanjo for unwittingly giving credit that I did not steal money in the Army. I believe that this country Nigeria ought to know by now all the crooks parading themselves as saints.Now I know why Obasanjo was surprised at my financial successes abroad, and then sent his wife Stella of blessed memory tome. She was my guest in Houston Texas for a week. We have video and pictures of the visit with witnesses like Jack Gonsoulin, Rod Anthony, and Tom Britton.

“I challenge Obasanjo to a debate on military tactics and strategies on the Nigerian Civil War. He wrote about his team. Who were they? George Innih went the wrong way to Arochukwu when Akinrinade needed reinforcement for the final battle to capture Uli Ihiala airport. Akinrinade told him that he would shoot George Innih anytime he showed up. Where was Obasanjo’sfake Apollo Battalion that operated behind enemy lines, when he could not capture Ohoba?When Akinrinade called him that Biafra troops had surrendered to him and the Pincer team, Obasanjo, who was coming from a party, got lost looking for them, as he did not know where to go and did not know the way to Amichi.

“I am not qualified to comment on Obasanjo’spolitical achievements, if any, for this country. The people and posterity will do that. There is no president in this country that he has not condemned.Haba!He always thinks that he has the preserve of knowledge on how to rule this country. Did the country move forward when he was Head of State or President? He destroyed the heart of the national security. We can see the result today. He destroyed education in many ways. We see the result today.He destroyed a lot of other things.As for how he has treated his family shabbily, his wife and children have openly made their comments. Those comments are in public domain today and forever, even though Obasanjo cleverly brushes them aside in his current book.

Former Nigeria President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo cutting the tape at the presentation of ‘My Watch’- A Memoir by Olusegun Obasanjo

An Abuja High Court on Wednesday held that former President Olusegun Obasanjo was in contempt for flouting an order it made restraining him from publishing his autobiography titled ‘My Watch’.

The trial judge, Justice Valentine Ashi, thereafter gave the former President 21 days from the day of service of the court’s orders on him, to show cause why he should not be punished for contempt for going ahead to publish the book in spite of the ex-parte interim order made by the court on December 5 and a pending libel suit before the publication, involving him.

The court further restrained the former President from further publishing, printing or offering the book for sale which content touches on the subject matter before the court.

Justice Ashi had on December 5 granted exparte interim order restraining Obasanjo from proceeding with plans to publish the book or have it published for him, and fixed December 10 as the return date.

However, despite the court’s interim orders, Obasanjo reportedly made public presentation of the book last Tuesday in Lagos, on the grounds that the book had been published before the court was misled into making the orders.

The court held that it was wrong for Obasanjo to have gone ahead to publish the book despite the fact that a libel suit, which subject matter formed part of the content of the book, was still pending before the court and that the orders he made on December 5 was still pending.

The author, Olusegun Obasanjo signs an autograph at the book unveiling

He further held that it was immaterial that the book was published before the interim orders were made noting that Chief Obasanjo ought not to have published the book because he was aware of the part-heard libel suit relating to the letter he wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan, accusing a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Buruji Kashamu, of being a fugitive wanted in the United States.

“The fact that the book was published in November is irrelevant. As long as the substantive suit is not yet determined, no party is entitled to publish or comment on material facts that are yet to be decided on by the court. I hold that the defendant is not only in contempt of the court, but has to show cause why he should not be punished for contempt and ordered to undo what he has wrongly done” the court held.

Furthermore, the court ordered the former President to within 21 days, from the day the order is served on him, to show cause, via affidavit, why he should not be punished for contempt committed by publishing and distributing for sale to the public, the book, My Watch, in plain disregard of the pendency of substantive the suit and the order of this court made on December 5, 2014 restraining him from doing so”.

Justice Ashi also ordered the Inspector General of Police, the Director General of the Department of State Services and the Comptroller of Customs, to recover the published book from all book stands, sales agents, vendors, the sea and airports and deposit them with his court’s registrar pending the determination of the substantive suit and fixed 13 January for hearing on the substantive suit.